Mr LEO McLEAY(8.18 p.m.) —Obviously, the member for Herbert (Mr Lindsay) has a short memory, or he would remember that his Prime Minister (Mr Howard), when he was Treasurer of this country, conned the people in the run-up to an election. Malcolm Fraser, when he was the Prime Minister of this country, offered that notorious fistful of dollars that people were going to get and never got. It is hard to think of a greater contradiction than the current government coming into this House and suggesting that they are going to have a charter of budget honesty when they have been so patently dishonest in their activities since coming to office.

The government says that it is seeking to put in place a legislative framework for the conduct and reporting of fiscal policy. We have already suggested that this legislation be looked at more closely by referring it to the Joint Committee of Public Accounts. That committee is the parliament's committee with expertise in financial matters, and what better organisation to scrutinise this piece of legislation than the Joint Committee of Public Accounts? Indeed, if the bill were referred to that committee, we might get a bill that would work better for the parliament and the people, and we might get a piece of legislation that actually does provide for some budget honesty.

If the government wanted to have legislation that really delivers what it says, it would ensure that the Public Accounts Committee looked at the bill before it became law. By avoiding this process, the government is only reinforcing the view that it is not fair dinkum on the issue, because one wonders why the government will not let the Public Accounts Committee consider the bill and report back to the House before the bill becomes law.

Numerous pieces of legislation are referred to the various parliamentary committees for consideration. I have no doubt that, when this bill gets to the Senate, the Senate may consider sending it off to a committee of theirs. So we find the government in this House saying, `We want to have budget honesty, but we are not going to be honest enough to let the parliament sit down in a bipartisan fashion to have a look at this legislation.' The reason for that is that in the budget the government broke $17 billion worth of promises which they had offered the people in the last election.

At the same time that the government is putting this legislation into the House of Representatives, government members on the Joint Committee on Electoral Matters are saying that the government should introduce legislation that provides for honesty in election promises. Of course, the government is not going to look at that—you can bet your life—because we know that what the Prime Minister did with most of the promises he made before the election was forget about them or make them non-core promises or give that reason or some other reason for not keeping them. We have had $17 billion worth of election promises that they have dishonestly put aside since the election.

In the budget the government broke $17 billion worth of election promises, without justification or shame. These were promises about which the Prime Minister put his hand on his heart during the last election and said, `Trust us. Trust us.' Ask all those people who lost their jobs.

Mr O'Connor —Honest John.

Mr LEO McLEAY —Honest John. Sometimes Honest John is what he is found to be today. Trust him when he can remember. That seems to be about the extent of honesty we get from this government. Ask the people in Canberra who lost their jobs when the government promised them that there would be no cuts to the public sector. Ask the people whom the coalition promised that there would be no work for the dole scheme—and today we had the Prime Minister announcing a work for the dole scheme as a smokescreen because of the other problems he has. And he says, `Well, that press release was not issued by me.' So it is not a promise!

The fact that it was issued on behalf of the coalition in the run-up to the election campaign does not matter. Now it would seem that we have a new standard on what we have to do for a government promise. It has to be on a sheet of paper that has the Prime Minister's photo and signature on it and that has testimonials from four or five different lawyers that he was of sound mind and body when he made this decision and he will remember it later on. That seems to be the test now.

Then they come in here and talk about how they are going to come up with a charter of budget honesty. These people would not know it if they saw it. How hypocritical is it when a government that professes it is for the family introduces what they call their family tax initiative package which gives money to families who earn very high salaries and takes it away from those who do not?

I recall quoting in here one night the explanatory memorandum for the family tax package. That was in the budget and that is supposed to be about budget honesty. In the election campaign the Prime Minister said that they were going to look after battling Australian families. One of the items in the explanatory memorandum talks about Jack or Jane who has two kids and earns about $70,000 a year, and the government is going to look after them. When you look at the small print, we find out that that is if Jack or Jane have only one income. Jack or Jane who stays home could be getting some money from a trust that Daddy has set up or could own a block of flats and be getting some rent. We will not count that; they will still get the family tax package money.

But a couple of battlers out in the western suburbs of Sydney or in a seat like mine in south-western Sydney who might only be earning $17,000 each, and both have to go to work because they are only earning $17,000, will not make as much as Jack or Jane on $68,000 with a little bit of money coming in from rent or Daddy. This is the government that said it was going to look after families. It is going to look after North Shore families and it is going to soak the families who live out in the western suburbs and in electorates like yours, Mr Deputy Speaker Hollis. But this is the charter of budget honesty. As I said, these people would not know what budget honesty was if it looked them in the face.

There are people who will, if they are lucky, get $25 out of the family tax initiative. That will not go far for a low income family when they see that that $25 is swallowed up in new taxes that the government has instituted. The Prime Minister said that we would not have any new taxes. But we are going to have new taxes, and that was in the budget that was supposed to be so honest. The $25 will not cover the extra costs associated with migrants having to pay more for English language programs. They were told before the election that the Liberal Party would never do that, but they did. The fact that people might get $25 out of the family tax initiative is just a joke. It is a joke for those people who are on low incomes, and the government has the hide to say that they want to have a charter of budget honesty.

When we talk about how honest these people are, before the election the government said they were not going to do anything about the ABC. They said they would not touch the ABC. Nowadays you probably cannot touch the ABC because there is not much left of it at all. Indeed, the government slashed funding to the ABC. We saw in that honest cabinet submission that Senator Alston did not know where it came from. All of a sudden it appeared on his desk. It had his name on it, but it appeared on his desk. He did not know where it came from. It suggested that if we do these things the Liberal Party and the National Party could get control of the ABC to make it do what they wanted. Senator Alston, when he was asked about this cabinet submission that had his name on it, said `Well, haven't heard of that.' So much for budget honesty. So much for honesty in government.

The coalition said that they had no plans whatsoever to change the operational subsidy for community based long day care centres. That is another promise broken by the government in the budget. So much for budget honesty, a charter for budget honesty. It is like giving Ned Kelly the seal of family approval. Good old Ned. He only robbed you, but at least Ned stood in front of you and told you that he was going to rob you. These people are busy robbing you and telling you that they need a charter of budget honesty to prove to you that they are really honest. It is just disgraceful.

We have heard talk in the last few days about the government introducing a 15 per cent superannuation surcharge when they were going to have no new taxes. We do not have taxes any more. Because we are honest, we have a charter of budget honesty if you are in this government. So you do not have new taxes; you have surcharges. You do not have new taxes because you have a charter of budget honesty; you have new fees. For example, there is a $26,000 up-front fee for people to get into a nursing home.

Mr O'Connor —Just a tax.

Mr LEO McLEAY —It is not. The parliamentary secretary cannot be right. It is not. This is a government of honesty and probity. This is a government that has its own charter of budget honesty. It would be like their saying to Ned Kelly, `Well, they hanged you because you're a thief, but we're now going to pass a bill to say you really weren't a thief; you were just a bloke who was out there looking for a bit of budget honesty.' The people who thought they were going to be able to get into a nursing home are now going to have to pay $26,000. That is not a tax, and that is what this government calls budget honesty.

Another promise that did not eventuate was the promise to increase funding for students with disabilities. You could not get a worse bunch of people who would make a promise to sick kids and then renege on that. But this is the government of budget honesty, and they did. They offered $16 million over three years for students with disabilities and it never happened. They even put a surcharge of one per cent on their rich mates for the Medicare levy. They told them there were not going to be any new taxes, but they are an honest government. They have their budget honesty charter and it is only a surcharge.

We have surcharges, we have up-front fees, we have everything except taxes. They promised we would not have any new taxes, but it just so happens that people are finding that they are paying a lot more under this government than they were. But they have got their little charter of budget honesty, so they can hold their hands on their hearts and say `Look, we're fair dinkum.'

After less than 13 months in office—we were in office for 13 years—and after all the fanfare, all the broken promises, all the excuses after the election about why they had to slash and burn the public sector, which they tried to blame on the Labor Party, we find that they have got their own $2.9 billion budget black hole. It is all their own work. It has all been done by Treasurer Costello.

He did not do that, did he? He says that the poor old tax commissioner dudded him; the tax commissioner never gave him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is all his own work. He was too stupid to ask the tax commissioner what the tax office thought business might do with their projections. One could say that he might have been too dishonest to ask because he knew that, if he did ask the tax commissioner what he thought business would do when the government changed the tax arrangements, he would say that business would try to make the best out of it for themselves.

What happened is that they said that there was a $1.6 billion tax error. It is not a mistake. The Treasurer has not mucked up. It is just a $1.6 billion error. That all went into his own happy $2.9 billion black hole. The government has made it clear that they have no strategies on how they ought to do these things. The Costello black hole clearly shows the government's incompetence in handling the Commonwealth's finances. The government has an abysmal track record, compared to the previous Labor government.

All they can do is try to legislate and say, `If we put these slogans up about having a charter of budget honesty, then somehow people will forgive us.' Of course the people will not. The people know that Labor had a very good record of budgetary reform and fiscal disclosure. We probably had the best record of any Commonwealth government in this regard.

While we were in government we introduced more open and transparent budget processes. This bill is only building on the things that we did. There is nothing original or new in this piece of legislation. We introduced three-year forward estimates of outlays and revenue and financial impact statements with all the explanatory material that went with any new piece of legislation.

We also introduced a mid-year review. We introduced a comprehensive report on specific payments to the states, but the government has omitted this from Budget Paper No. 3, showing less rather than more transparency and causing the states great difficulty in preparing their own budgets. The charter of budget honesty seeks to put in place a legislative framework for the conduct and reporting of fiscal policy, but the trouble is that it is all a bit of a smokescreen for the government—just like their work for the dole scheme that they announced today. They got themselves into a bit of trouble so we have to have a smokescreen.

The opposition will vote for the bill. We will support it because we think it can add something. But we also say that, if the government were halfway decent and was not full of hypocrisy and cant, the parliamentary secretary, when responding on behalf of the government on this bill, would say, `We can understand the point that the opposition is making. We think this ought to go to the Public Accounts Committee for consideration.' That is where it ought to go. If it went to the Public Accounts Committee for consideration and report back to the parliament, we would get a better bill.

That is probably not what the government is really interested in. All it is interested in is short-term fixes, finding ways to try and denigrate their predecessor and wrapping itself up in things that it really had nothing to do with. It does not matter how many budget honesty points of view the government wants to put forward and how many charters of this or that the government wants to put forward; the fact is that in less than 12 months this government has blown out the federal budget to the tune of $2.9 billion. And it has all been Treasurer Costello's work.

This is the fellow who stood up here and crowed about how he was going to solve the problems of the country and save us all from everything except chickenpox. If this is how he does it, then they really ought to pass that piece of legislation about Ned Kelly—resurrect him, make him the Treasurer of Australia and he might be able to do a better job than Treasurer Costello has.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, when Ned Kelly was into sticking you up he told you. This Treasurer is into sticking you up, robbing you blind and trying to make out that somehow or other this is all transparent and terrific. The opposition says to the government: send the bill off to the Public Accounts Committee, allow the Public Accounts Committee to come up with a better bill and adopt the amendments that we have suggested and you will actually get something that is more workable, something that is more honest, something that is more transparent and something that is better for the Australian parliament and the Australian people.