06-August-2010
Portfolio Media Releases, The Economy, Community, Funding
Topics: Labor’s debt, Wayne Swan not knowing interest repayments on Labor’s borrowings, Julia Gillard’s untruths about Coalition company tax plan.
E&OE
ANDREW ROBB:
I’d just like to make a few comments about the economy and the economic competence of the Government. There’s no doubt that the result of this election will turn on who is best placed to clean up the economic mess that the country finds itself in, who is best placed to get rid of the $90 billion, the $90 thousand million, of debt, who is best placed to get rid of the $57 billion of deficit, who is best place to take pressure of interest rates which are now the highest in the western world, who is best placed to stop the new taxes, the great big new taxes, the $10 billion mining tax, $20 billion carbon tax, who is best placed to take the pressure off the cost of living.
Now, today in seeking to make his case on a radio program this morning, the Treasurer of the country, Wayne Swan, made the most extraordinary admission. When asked, what was the interest on the debt paid each week by the Government, he failed to answer – twice he was asked, twice he didn’t know the answer.
The fact is this Government is borrowing $700 million a week every week, and the Budget papers confirmed that will continue. $700 million a week every week, for the next two years. It’s an extraordinary amount of borrowings. It’s the equivalent of a brand new world class hospital a week that we’re borrowing.
And yet when asked, what is the interest payment on that debt, Mr Swan had no idea. Here he is, the Treasurer of the country, borrowing $700 million a week, who receives a Treasury briefing every morning, has no idea what is the interest that we’re paying as a country.
Well I can inform Mr Swan that at the moment, Australia, the Australian Government, using tax payers’ money, is spending $81 million every week in paying interest on the loans that they are accruing. Now, the really important point is that they’re borrowing $700 million a week and they’re paying $81 million in interest payments which means the Government is borrowing to pay the interest.
Our Government, Wayne Swan, Julia Gillard, are borrowing $81 million a week to pay the interest – they’re borrowing $700 million a week but $81 million of that is to pay the interest. It means that as a country we’ve got ourselves into the extraordinary situation where Wayne Swan or Julia Gillard are borrowing $700 million a week to pay, in part, to pay the interest on our debt.
Now, I think every family understands, that if they have to borrow to pay the interest on their debt, they are in big trouble, they are on a slippery slope if that happens. And this is case for the country. It’s grossly irresponsible. And for the Treasurer of the country not to have any inkling of what the interest bill is each week on the money borrowed, just shows what an economic lightweight Wayne Swan our Treasurer is.
On a second matter, this campaign of Labor’s is starting to fall apart. It’s dysfunctional. As such they’ve got no plan to offer, they’ve got no idea as to how to remove the debt and bring down the cost of living increases, and they’re divided, they’re divided. As a consequence they are getting desperate. As a Government and as an opponent they are getting desperate. We’re starting to see endless lies and misrepresentations and distortions.
There are two examples of that, this morning, the Prime Minister in a press conference made the statement that Tony Abbott will do nothing for small business, that he’s got no plan to reduce small business tax and that he’s got no plan to benefit small business who are under great pressure. Of course, Julia Gillard, would know, should know, does know, that we announced a week ago that small business, if we are elected to government, will see a tax reduction of one and a half per cent in the corporate tax. That’s 700,000 small businesses that will benefit from a one and half per cent cut in corporate taxation.
Now the Labor Party is proposing to cut small business taxation by one per cent. So not only was she wrong, not only was she lying to the Australian people, not only was she misleading the Australian people, but in fact the Coalition is doing more on tax reductions than the Labor party for small business.
The other area is the question of costings. On a daily basis we’re seeing faceless men, we’re seeing Wayne Swan and we’re seeing the Prime Minister herself, making totally fallacious comments and observations about our costings and our programs.
The fact of the matter is, you know, you’ve got a Treasurer who doesn’t even have a clue about what is the interest bill on the country’s massive debt, its $90 billion of debt, how could he competently make any comments about our costings and our programs?
The fact is that we have, we have announced now some $46.7 billion worth of savings, $24 billion on the current account and $22 billion on the capital account. We will have our program, fully costed, fully funded, and we will demonstrate how we can start to make inroads on the debt that this Government has accrued.
We have already submitted 34 programs, savings programs or spending programs to the Treasury for their costings. This is eleven programs more than the Government has submitted and here they are daily saying that we’re not doing what we should. We will comply with the Charter of Budget Honesty. We introduced it when we were in government.
Unlike the Labor party who last time, delivered 85 per cent of their costing and spending programs at 12.30pm on the Friday before the election, less than 12 hours before election day. It was just a joke, it was an insult and it was in complete contravention to the Charter of Budget Honesty.
We will comply with the Charter of Budget Honesty. We will demonstrate prudential financial management. We will show Australia that we are the best placed to clean up the horrific debt, the interest rate pressures and the cost of living pressures that people are facing.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Robb, on costings, two of the big savings measures that the Coalition has announced, I wanted to ask whether they had been submitted yet for official costing – the freeze on public sector recruitment for two years, which I think Mr Abbott says will save $3.8 billion, and the saving on interest through not proceeding the with the NBN, the National Broadband Network, saving $2.4. Have those to big savings been submitted for formal costing to Treasury or Finance and if not, why not?
ANDREW ROBB:
They haven’t yet been submitted. We have submitted programs which I think amount to over $5 billion worth of savings. We have submitted spending programs which are around the $300 million mark, several programs, six, I think in total. Those two programs that you’ve referred to, along with others, have been submitted to the independent accounting group that we have commissioned to audit, if you like, our costings and spending programs, before we submit them to Treasury.
Now last week, the official economic numbers were released on which both parties were extensively to base their costings. They were released on Monday, I suspect the Government had some forewarning of those numbers, but I’m not criticising that. But we got them on Monday. We spent, internally, two days readjusting as best we could, our costings. Then we submitted a large body of work to our accounting, independent accounting group.
JOURNALIST:
Have you had any advice back from them yet on those two big programs?
ANDREW ROBB:
No, we’ve submitted, as they’ve worked through programs, we are then submitted those to Treasury. We’ve made two, in less than a week, we’ve made two submissions, and in fact now we’ve got as I said eleven more programs have been submitted to Treasury than the Government.
So they’re in position, they’re in no position on any grounds actually. They have also accused us of you know getting our numbers wrong on things like the Education Tax Rebate, which was a nonsense. You know those figures they had us spending twice what it will cost.
They are in no position. You’ve got a Treasurer who doesn’t understand or doesn’t know what the interest bill is which just beggars belief and here they are too which the Cash for Clunkers program, which they’ve estimated at $400 million, Julia Gillard’s own Industry Minister has estimated it will cost $1 billion and Treasury have already found errors in that program in terms of the costing of it. So here’s, you know, one of the first programs out of the blocks and it’s got a $600 million hole in it and it’s also a nonsense program, it’s just buying votes.
The Cash for Clunkers will increase the price of vehicles for people who can least afford it, will be rorted in an extraordinary way, has failed overseas and is another example of policy making on the run.
JOURNALIST:
But on these two big savings measures you remain confident of your numbers?
ANDREW ROBB:
I’m confident of our numbers on all our savings measures.
JOURNALIST:
Yesterday, Joe Hockey made a similar blunder to the one Wayne Swan made today…
ANDREW ROBB:
No, no, no he didn’t. No. Absolutely no comparison and it wasn’t a blunder by Joe Hockey. Joe Hockey was asked what is our debt to GDP ratio, and he said it changes every day, which it does because they’re borrowing $100 million gross every day, $100 million. And Joe Hockey said in his answer it changes every day, so his answer was correct.
Today the Treasurer of the country was unable, unable, and when asked several times, to have any indication of what the interest bill was each week on $90 billion of debt. It just beggars belief. This man is dangerous as a Treasurer not only incompetent but dangerous to have someone in charge of the economy.
No wonder we’ve got tax and spend and borrowing as the answer to every problem. No wonder we’ve got new taxes being proposed - $10 billion worth of mining tax, which he promoted, he sought to drive through, the carbon tax, which he promoted, he sought to drive through. This is a government which is dangerous to the future of this country and the only way to remove that danger is to remove the Government.
JOURNALIST:
Tony Abbott said today that he’ll deliver a bigger budget surplus than the Labor can, can you put a figure on how much bigger that surplus will be?
ANDREW ROBB:
Not at this stage but we will before the election.
JOURNALIST:
How can you deliver a bigger budget surplus than Labor?
ANDREW ROBB:
By being more prudent. By firstly cutting programs that are not warranted when we are in such dire financial straits. Secondly by cutting programs and replacing them with more effective spending in a number of areas. You saw it today on the health program, that’s a hugely expensive program, a very important program for the country, but the deal that the Labor party, formally Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard and the senior colleagues, struck with the states is a monumental increase in bureaucracy.
I bet you could not ask one Australian what the Labor Government’s health program will do for them, how it works, what’s involved. People have no idea. What it will mean is another layer of bureaucracy at a regional level. It’ll mean hundreds of more bureaucrats at a federal level. And it means that nobody in Australia has an understanding of what they’re delivering.
Today we have delivered, we’ve taken that money, we’re not spending anymore, but in a far more effective spending of money in delivering more nurses, more doctors, more hospital beds, and a whole range of programs, that will mean direct action, not years of bureaucracy before you see any improvement in the health system.
JOURNALIST:
But isn’t Tony Abbot pre-empting the economic conditions that might exist, that have a great impact on how big a budget surplus is? Isn’t it a bit, you know, without foresight to make a statement that he’ll commit to a bigger budget surplus?
ANDREW ROBB:
Well what he’s saying is that on the assumption, which we can do nothing else but assume that Treasury has got the forecast right, if those forecasts are right, and we are concerned that the Government has taken the rosiest picture, but if they’re right, we’re going to compare apples with apples, their using those numbers, and we will have to use those forecasts on revenue. On that basis we will demonstrate that on the savings side and on the spending side that we can produce a stronger surplus.
We have to. The country has not got the money. We have to, as a country, live within our means. We’ve got a situation today, where the Government is borrowing money every week, to pay the interest bill on the $90 billion debt. No family, no family would put themselves in a situation where they are borrowing to pay the interest on their family debt. No young person should be taking out another credit card, just to pay the interest on the debt on their first credit card.
How many people have got in to trouble with that? How many Treasurers have told people to be responsible with their borrowing? Not to be borrowing money to pay off their debt. And yet we’ve got this Government, every week, borrowing $81 million along with the increased borrowings, $81 million of the $700 million that they are borrowing each week is going towards paying the interest on the debt that they have accrued.
This is highly irresponsible, something has to be done. We’re living as a country beyond our means. This Government has got us into that situation because their only answer to problems in this country is to spend then to tax and to borrow, and now their gauging money even out of their instrumentalities such as the Medibank Private, their gauging hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for their reckless spending.
The reckless spending must stop. That is the answer. The reckless spending must stop. So that we take the pressure off interest rates, so that we start to live within our means, so that we pay off that debt quickly, so that if there is another downturn in the world economy that we have restored some of the resilience that this Government inherited when they took over government three years ago.
JOURNALIST:
As the man in charge of the Liberal campaign, how’s it going and do you think you can win on August 21
ANDREW ROBB:
Well, we are competitive but we’ve got a long way to go. We’re still clearly the underdogs. You only have to look at the betting markets to see that we’re still the underdogs. But we are confident that we are getting an opportunity to lay out a very clear plan for removing the massive debt, for getting rid of the taxes, for stopping the waste, the endless waste, the appalling waste of this Government, and stopping the boats.
If we can succeed in the next two weeks, clearly establishing that solid program, I think we will be in with a very competitive opportunity.
JOURNALIST:
The polls aren’t looking good in Victoria, are you concerned about the Liberals chances in gaining and maintaining seats here?
ANDREW ROBB:
No, we’ve got two weeks. I’m very confident about the quality of all of our sitting members and I’m very confident, we’ve got some outstanding candidates, and I do think that as people come to make decisions, come to make their decision in a fortnight’s time across the country, I think we will be very competitive.
But it’s very difficult, we’re fighting history. It’s nearly 80 years since a first term government was thrown out. And we’ve got, you know, the Prime Minister is a home town girl. So all of those issues but I do think people will focus on in the end, when they go into the polling booth, as to what will be in the best interests of themselves and their families. And if they do that I think we will secure, we should secure at least, the majority of votes.
JOURNALIST:
(Inaudible)
ANDREW ROBB:
I think it’s been a very solid campaign, very disciplined. We’re united. I mean the other side of politics, it’s been a daily charade of bitterness really that’s been emerging on their side of politics. They’re so deceived with the brutal way they executed, the faceless men executed the Prime Minister, it has sown the seeds of great disunity within their party and if they do succeed in winning the election of the 21st of August, that will dominate I think their three years, their next three years of government will be dominated by infighting, by payback, by recrimination.
We’re seeing it already and it has really, it has really I think, caused great havoc in their campaign and it really is symptomatic of what we’ll see of a Gillard government if they are re-elected.
JOURNALIST:
Would you give yourself a score out of ten?
ANDREW ROBB:
I don’t want to start scoring out of ten. We’ve got a long way to go. So I think we’ve, I think it has been a very disciplined campaign. I think Tony Abbott has been exceptional, he’s calm, he’s in charge, he’s clear with his message and if we keep that up for the next two weeks we’ll be in a very competitive position.