Mr BEAZLEY (3:32 PM) —One of the interesting things, on this final day of parliament, that brings into clear relief all that arrogant triumphalism that we have heard from the government over the last few weeks is the government's extraordinarily poor performance, as far as unemployment numbers are concerned, that was revealed today. This is the worst monthly jump in unemployment since 1992. We have to recollect that in 1992 what was then being experienced was a worldwide recession. That may yet be experienced—I hope not, and I believe not—in the course of the next 12 months, but we are not experiencing it now. Then there was a worldwide recession and that was the background the last time unemployment jumped like it did today. The government attempted to gloss over that with monthly volatility and all the rest of it. That is fine; there are monthly volatilities in the figures. But it does not disguise the fact that their overall performance as far as unemployment is concerned has been absolutely pathetic.

Let me go through the numbers. This is of direct relevance because it relates to something I am going to say about tax in a minute or two. In the last 33 months of Labor's term of office, there were 628,000 jobs created in this country; the 33 months of the Liberal period of office has seen 310,000 jobs created. The last 33 months of the Labor government saw 363,000 full-time jobs created; the figure for this government is 126,000 jobs. In part-time jobs, 265,000 were created under Labor; 183,000 have been created under this government. The downward trend in unemployment in the last 33 months of the Labor government was 2.5 per cent; the downward trend under this government has been 0.4 per cent, and that is before we get to the issue of the participation rate, which would put that figure into perspective. The participation rate was 68.3 per cent when the Labor Party left office; it is 63.2 per cent now.

The point about all of that is this: the only improvement in unemployment numbers which this government has managed to produce—and the Prime Minister's complacent statement that this is the best the Australian people have ever experienced in 33 years—is that, by driving women out of the work force and sundry others discouraging them, you have managed to produce a situation where we are not here discussing today an unemployment level of 8.9 per cent. If we had been discussing today an unemployment level of 8.9 per cent, that would have set off alarm bells throughout the media in this community, and in this country there would be a public disquiet and a lack of confidence over job prospects.

In the last quarter they have finally managed to achieve a level of growth that was routine under the previous Labor government. On the basis of that particular swallow for this particular summer, the Prime Minister claims that we are experiencing the best period economically—our golden age—for at least the last 33 years. The arrogance of that comment surpasses only the arrogance with which he claims credit for the fact that there is any level of fireproofing at all.

You are now seeing—it is a shame they did not do it before the election; we would have much appreciated it then—one economic commentator after another going through the list of changes that the Labor Party put in place in the 1980s and the extraordinary consequences we bore for that politically with the base of people who normally supported the Labor Party.

When we go to the levels of productivity that the IMF referred to, which they praised here—the figures that the IMF produced were not for the last couple of years; they were for the last eight—those productivity changes have now permitted a situation of increased profit share and increased wages growth which are entirely a product of the decisions that were taken by the previous government. The contribution of this government since it has been in office, with the competence with which they have handled public policy, has been to put a baseball bat through that achievement for the first two years. Even after doing that, so resilient was the economy that it has been able to storm back based on the changes that were put in place before they came to office.

They complain that they confronted a budget deficit when they came into office. Contemplate a budget deficit of $25 billion with an 11 per cent unemployment rate and an 11 per cent inflation rate. That is what we inherited from John Howard back in 1983. They inherited an economy which at least they had the honesty and decency at the outset, before they got into fables in this parliament, to describe as `better than good in parts'.

What is their contribution? They keep inviting everybody to express new ideas in this place. They do have a new idea. The new idea is this: if you introduce a goods and services tax you improve the possibility of generating job growth in the economy. That is genuinely a new idea. I give that to them. People have introduced goods and services taxes in the past—there is no doubt about that. It was introduced in Europe, in the first instance, not to provide jobs, because it was introduced at a time when people thought that jobs would grow forever, that we would never have an unemployment problem again and therefore we could afford to tax value.

That was the assumption that was around at that point of time. It did not matter if you put a cumbersome set of compliance burdens on business. Who cared? Business would generate jobs anyway. So let us get that into place. What was its purpose? To provide jobs in the European Community? No, to subsidise French agriculture. So that there could be a set of subsidies that suited the European conditions of the time, which went for the protection of agriculture in Europe—to the very great bane, I might say, of Australian farmers when that was done. That was one reason for doing it.

Other governments have put it in place for other purposes, such as revenue raising. If you do put on a tax, it is likely that you will raise revenue, so governments have put on goods and services taxes to raise revenue. In recent times most have been deeply disappointed with the performance. They have been deeply concerned with the fact that they have found even greater difficulties in relation to compliance. Despite the burdensome requirements on compliance, they have had even more disappointment in relation to the compliance than they expected to. Most have found, as the British Treasury revealed, that estimates by treasuries of what they will receive has fallen far short.

But that had nothing to do with jobs—nothing at all. Nobody on earth—until the Australian Liberal party decided to reinvent itself on that subject and lose the wisdom that they once had in relation to a comprehension of the compliance costs and others—had ever come managed to come up with the idea that putting a GST in place would actually create job growth.

One of the problems that this government is going to confront over the next six months as the Senate inquiry proceeds is that they are going to start to get the Econotechs and the Monash groups coming forward with the proper analysis. Hitherto, these groups have been looking at distributional effects associated with a GST. They have been looking at the issues of fairness and equity, and they have come to some pretty horrible conclusions as to whether or not the compensation package of the government in relation to the likely increase in cost—as opposed to the government's claimed increase in cost—is going to take place. And they have given it a thumbs down on that front.

Now they are turning their attention to the growth issues related to a goods and services tax, and what they are finding is that in some sectors it will be deeply punitive of continued growth in those sectors and that, in the country as a whole, at very best it will have a nil effect and the likelihood is that it will constrain growth. And if you constrain growth, of course, you constrain the jobs.

So here we are: we sit at the beginning of this term of parliament with unemployment rising, with unemployment rising through the roof if the people who had left the work force bothered to stay there, and we have a government with one idea: a unique idea to them but the one idea having nothing to do with a central problem of economic management in this community.

So they are going to put in place a goods and services tax. Why would it be commonsense to suspect that the modellers are probably correct when they say from a statistical point of view that the government is going to be wrong in its projections on jobs? From a commonsense point of view, if you introduce for the first time a tax on the area of the economy which has generated 90 per cent of the job growth in the last decade, it would penetrate the minds of all but the most obtuse on the government front bench that the likely effect of this would not be to create additional jobs but to detract from that. That is commonsense, producing earlier on from our point of view during the course of the election debate what the modellers are now producing and will no doubt present to the Senate over the next six months. This is a 100 per cent job killer, this great new idea of this government being imposed here.

Contrast that with the tax credit proposals that we had which were rewarding people for work, encouraging people into the work force, a job grower, an accepted job grower in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the international community, the United States, in particular, is the definer as far as job growth is concerned.

There is a second statistic that people might like to contemplate. Ninety per cent of jobs growth has been in the service industries and, when you go to job growth in the economy, virtually the entirety of it resides in small business and a very substantial portion of it in microbusiness. And of course they experience a massive increase in compliance costs, resources of about $2.2 billion, taken overall. Resources which could have been devoted to investment, resources which could have been devoted to the creation of additional employment opportunities, are instead going to be part of a burdensome and debilitating compliance obligation upon ordinary businesses in this community. That will of course have a completely negative effect on jobs. This is public policy stupidity, not backed up by logic and argument but by mindless, loudmouth, arrogant assertion. That is all we get from this government: mindless, loudmouth arrogant assertion.

That stupidity is matched only by the stupidity in the health area. That is the other of two areas that ought to be contemplated. There is no doubt a problem with public hospitals in this country, and logic would suggest that when you have a public hospital problem in this country you actually provide the hospitals with resources. One and a half billion dollars is twice what all the state governments put forward as their optimum claim on the Commonwealth. The most gilded of gilded lilies as far as they are concerned is less than half of what the Commonwealth is prepared to spend on one thing. The government is prepared to spend $1.5 billion on a two per cent improvement in the numbers of people taking out private health insurance.

In so far as it impacts at all on funds for public hospitals, it is the case in a number of states that if they get that two per cent there is an automatic discount as far as public hospitals are concerned. There is no relationship between what is the actual reduction in obligation on public hospitals and that cut; there is no requirement to demonstrate that in fact demand has fallen in the public hospitals—there is merely an assertion that it ought to fall and therefore they will be deprived. So, as $1.5 billion is spent on marking time, what is going to happen—at least in Brisbane and Melbourne, because they are the first two cabs off the rank—is that they are going to lose something like $100 million a year as far as public hospitals are concerned. This is going to be truly spectacular. This is yet another feature of policy incompetence by this government.

Here we have, at the start of this new parliament, in the two key areas of public policy, the government's two new ideas. There are two results from those new ideas. One is increasing joblessness and the other is deterioration of public health in this country. If those are the new ideas that they enjoin us to support, what else do they have in mind for us? What other elements of destruction do you wish to wreak on the Australian community and Australian families? We will have a few new ideas for them, don't worry about that. But we will not be going along with two of the worst ideas, argued for in the worst possible way, that those concerned with public policy in this country have set eyes on.