The Hon. Joe Hockey :: Shadow Treasurer

Transcripts

CHANNEL NINE LATE NIGHT NEWS

12th May 2009

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LAURIE OAKES:

Mr Hockey, before you start bagging the budget, are you at least pleased about the pension rise"

JOE HOCKEY:

Absolutely Laurie. We tried to get that up last year. We introduced a bill into the Parliament. The Labor Party opposed it. So we welcome the support for pensioners.

LAURIE OAKES:

Well they opposed it because they had an inquiry which led to tonight’s decision but are you embarrassed that your government did nothing about pensions before this?

JOE HOCKEY:

That’s not right, Laurie. That’s Labor folk lore. In fact, pensions increased by more than one per cent per annum in real terms – that’s after inflation – each year under our government. And then there was a whole lot of benefits that kicked in, utilities allowances and so on. So it’s just not right.

LAURIE OAKES:

Anything else in the budget you think is good?

JOE HOCKEY:

Well look, it’s important to spend money on infrastructure but what alarms us is that the amount of money the Government is spending on infrastructure is roughly the same as the amount they handed out in cash splashes earlier this year and the fact is they’re not trying to grow the pie. You know, the best way to create more jobs is to grow the economy and there’s nothing here that truly grows the economy.

LAURIE OAKES:

Well the Government says that their measures have saved 200,000 jobs - unemployment would be 200,000 higher without it.

JOE HOCKEY:

That’s casino economics, Laurie. Effectively, they’ve spent $200,000 to $250,000 per job…

LAURIE OAKES:

Mr Swan says that’s junk politics.

JOE HOCKEY:

I’m sorry Mr Swan takes that attitude. Mr Swan didn’t have the courage to be fair dinkum with the Australian people about the debt and the deficit. This is a record level of debt in modern Australian history, a record deficit in modern Australian history and it’s, you know two-thirds of the debt, two thirds of the debt is attributed to Mr Rudd’s new spending since he was elected - reckless spending.

LAURIE OAKES:

Well Mr Swan claims in his budget speech that the deficit will be halved in three years, wiped out and we’ll be back in surplus in six. Do you accept that?

JOE HOCKEY:

No, no one’s treating that seriously Laurie. Both the International Monetary Fund, which the Government is fond of quoting, and the Reserve Bank, which the Government is fond of quoting, both said it will be a slow recovery and yet in the budget papers they are projecting not only a trend growth but above trend growth and not just for two years but their assumptions of getting out of deficit and debt is based on seven years, an unprecedented growth period in Australia’s history. You know what? The debt is still going to be there. $9,000 for every man, woman and child just on today’s figures.

LAURIE OAKES:

But it’s Treasury that produces the figures saying that we’ll be growing at the 4.5 per cent again within a couple of years. Are you saying Treasury is wrong or have they been leaned on?

JOE HOCKEY:

Well we’ll be very interested. We’ll ask a lot of questions about this because Treasury’s assumptions are not in accordance with what the Reserve Bank or the IMF are saying. But after the first two years Laurie, the assumption that we’re going to get into a boom period on a scale we haven’t seen before is just ridiculous. And you know, quite frankly, this is the biggest deficit and biggest debt in modern Australian history and Wayne Swan didn’t have the courage to level with the Australian people about it tonight.

LAURIE OAKES:

He didn’t include it in his speech.

JOE HOCKEY:

Yeah, he didn’t include it in his speech. But what’s worse, there’s no plan for recovery. This is a ball and chain around the leg of every Australian for a generation and there’s no apologies tonight from Kevin Rudd or Wayne Swan.

LAURIE OAKES:

What there is is a list of spending cuts, some of them quite significant. They total $22.6 billion over four years. I mean, would you cut any harder if you were in government?

JOE HOCKEY:

You know what’s interesting, you add up all the so-called major saving initiatives from this Government and it represents one per cent of all their expenditure over the five year period. One per cent. They call them tough decisions. They represent just one per cent of all of the outlays over five years.

LAURIE OAKES:

Where would you be tougher?

JOE HOCKEY:

Well the starting point is we wouldn’t have had $3 billion spent, $3 billion on pink bats. We wouldn’t have…

LAURIE OAKES:

Let’s make this budget the starting point.

JOE HOCKEY:

But a lot of this money is…

LAURIE OAKES:

Let’s assume you become Treasurer now magically. What do you do?

JOE HOCKEY:

Well the starting point is you go through every program. You do have to make hard decisions. You do have to make hard decisions. Secondly,

you’ve got to look for initiatives that focus on small business. Small business will be the engine room of the recovery. Have no doubt about it. And small business, 2.4 million of them out there. You need to give them an incentive to grow. That’s what you’ve got to do.

LAURIE OAKES:

So when will you be promising tougher measures then for the next election?

JOE HOCKEY:

I’ll tell you what we’ll do. At the next election, we will promise – as we have delivered in the past – we will promise to have less debt, smaller deficits and more jobs for Australians.

LAURIE OAKES:

Well if you’re serious then about deficit and debt, presumably you won’t be voting in the Senate to try and block savings measures?

JOE HOCKEY:

Laurie, I give you this absolute commitment – we will be very responsible on the Government’s initiatives. Now we need to look at all the detail of them but we will take a very responsible approach bearing in mind that when we were in government, every step we took to pay off Labor’s debt and deficit they opposed. They opposed tax reform, they opposed privatisation. They opposed industrial relations reform. They opposed higher taxes that we had to impose at a point of time to get that budget deficit down, to get the debt down.

LAURIE OAKES:

They also opposed lower taxes for some people…

JOE HOCKEY:

Which is quite bizarre!

LAURIE OAKES:

[inaudible] not by yourself on that. Will you pass the main savings measures?

JOE HOCKEY:

Laurie we will be responsible. I’ll give you that commitment. I’ve only had it for a few hours. We will go through the initiatives. If we can improve them, we will but we will be responsible.

LAURIE OAKES:

Mr Hockey, we thank you.

JOE HOCKEY:

Thank you Laurie.

[ends]

Updates

Transcripts

CHANNEL NINE LATE NIGHT NEWS

12th May 2009