Dr EMERSON (7:19 PM) —Last week, in a desperate search for a policy—any policy—the government discovered the need to address the problem of inadequate retirement incomes in this country. In its documentation, the government said in relation to retirement incomes:

You would be forgiven for believing that the government embraced superannuation; that it thought it was a good idea. But that is not the truth. This government has been hostile to the very notion of superannuation for working Australians. If the Prime Minister and Treasurer had had their way there would be no superannuation for wage earners; there would only be superannuation for the privileged. I refer to statements by the then opposition spokesperson on superannuation, speaking on Labor's Superannuation Guarantee Charge Bill 1992. In his speech on the second reading debate, the Liberal opposition spokesman said:

That is the coalition view on Labor 's superannuation initiatives that were introduced into the parliament by Prime Minister Keating. But that is not all: there is a range of further statements by this government that show exactly what their attitude has been to superannuation as a contributor to adequate retirement incomes. The now Treasurer, Mr Costello, said in this parliament on 13 May 1991:

That was the now Treasurer saying what he believed about superannuation and the merits of it. The current Prime Minister, when he was Treasurer back in 1981, said:

That was the Hancock committee back in 1981. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer of this country have a long track record of stated hostility to superannuation, and they come into this parliament now and say that they are the friends of superannuation—almost as if they had invented superannuation; but of course they did not. They displayed nothing but hostility towards superannuation. In a speech on 25 November 1985, the Prime Minister said:

There you go: that is the current Prime Minister then, again, indicating his total hostility to superannuation for working Australians. But, of course, Prime Minister Keating prevailed. He said in a speech in July 1991:

And he went on to explain what he had in mind. That was Mr Keating back in July 1991—and here we are in 2004, and this government have now discovered the importance of superannuation to adequate retirement incomes. Back in 1991, Labor leaders were saying, `That is exactly what we need,' but they were opposed, root and branch, at every opportunity by the coalition. Worse than opposing superannuation, when this government came into office they cancelled Labor's co-contribution in their 1996 budget. In so doing, the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, broke his promise. An article in the Age of 3 February 1996, before the election, states:

Short-changed? They cancelled the superannuation co-contribution that would have taken superannuation adequacy up to 15 per cent; and then they have the gall, last week, to say they have discovered superannuation and the need for an adequate retirement incomes policy. What hypocrisy! Hypocrisy, thy name is Liberal.

The government continued with the big Liberal lie. The big Liberal lie is this: this government cancelled the superannuation co-contribution, which was the second instalment of the tax cuts that were promised by the previous Labor government, and the Treasurer has said repeatedly, `There was one tax cut which did not pay $1 to one person for one day.' The Treasurer has said this time and time again. He said it again, in parliament on 11 May 2000, when he said:

Not only did he say it then and once before but the Treasurer of this country has said in this parliament 12 times that Labor's tax cuts were not paid for one day or for one dollar—including in a matter of public importance speech titled `Public life: Ethical standards and honesty'. In that speech, the Treasurer repeated his lie that Labor's tax cuts were not paid for one day or for one dollar.

Let us have a look at the truth. The first half of those tax cuts were delivered, and they were delivered ahead of schedule. Just the first half of those tax cuts were a much bigger proportion of income tax collections than the Treasurer's own tax cuts in the 2003 budget were. I have worked it out. The Labor tax cuts, delivered ahead of schedule in 1993, were 5.1 per cent of personal income tax; whereas the Treasurer's tax cuts of 2003 were 2.5 per cent of personal income tax. The second instalment of the tax cuts was converted by the Keating Labor government into $4 billion worth of superannuation contributions for working Australians, and it was that co-contribution that was cancelled by this government after Mr Howard, then the opposition leader, promised that there would be no disadvantage, that he would not be taking anything off the working men and women of Australia. But he did. One of the very first measures of the government, when they came into this parliament, was to cancel that co-contribution, worth $4 billion, which would have taken superannuation up to 15 per cent. Then they come along and say, `We really need to do something about the adequacy of retirement incomes.' How on earth these people have managed to get away with this for so long is beyond me. It is absolutely breathtaking. When the Treasurer speaks about tax cuts, he also speaks about budgets. In parliament on 10 May 2000, he said:

That is just untrue; it is another great Liberal lie. Labor produced headline surpluses in 1987-88, 1988-89, 1989-90 and 1990-91, and Labor produced underlying surpluses in 1972-73, 1973-74, 1974-75, 1987-88, 1988-89, 1989-90 and 1990-91. Yet the Treasurer said Labor never produced a surplus on a headline basis or an underlying basis. When talking about tax cuts at the National Press Club to a packed audience of journalists on 10 May 2000, the Treasurer said:

Again, this is another great Liberal lie. Labor gave tax cuts seven times in 13 years. I will give you the years: November 1984, December 1986, July 1987, July 1989, January 1990, January 1991 and November 1993. Yet the Treasurer went to the National Press Club in 2000 and said there had not been a tax cut in this country for 20 years, and the Press Club full of journalists apparently accepted that.

This Treasurer says the same thing over and over again—the same untruth, the great Liberal lie. He is getting to the point where he knows that, if he says it over and over again—and he has already said it a dozen times in the parliament—people will believe him. He says that there were no tax cuts for 20 years, yet there were seven tax cuts in 13 years under Labor, handing back every cent of bracket creep and even more. That is something that this government has never done. This government owes the taxpayers of Australia a large amount of money in bracket creep—a fact that has been reported widely in the Australian newspaper, amongst many.

How much longer are the government going to get away with the big Liberal lie that Labor's tax cuts were never paid for one day or for one dollar? The fact is that the Liberals in government in 1996 cancelled the very superannuation co-contributions that would have taken retirement incomes up to an adequacy of 15 per cent, the target figure. They withdrew that—they axed it—after promising that they would not do so. That is why I say: `Hypocrisy, thy name is Liberal.'

The government has been searching for a third term agenda, a third term policy. It has no third term agenda, let alone a fourth term agenda. For eight years the Howard government has been harvesting the productivity yield from the hard economic reforms implemented by the Hawke and Keating governments. Now, tragically, productivity growth is forecast to turn down again, after a record-breaking decade. And what is the government doing about it?

I started warning about this in the year 2001, because the portents were then clearly evident. For its productivity growth and Australia's prosperity the government has relied, overwhelmingly, on Labor's creation of an open and competitive economy. But you cannot create an open and competitive economy twice. Without a new economic reform program aimed at the new sources of productivity growth, Australia's productivity performance was always going to suffer. And a slump in productivity growth and the ageing of the population are about as dangerous a cocktail as you could possibly imagine. Each ingredient—the productivity slump and the ageing of the population—is harmful, but together they are pure poison. Yet that is the official outlook.

The report heralded by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister of this country last week, their own Intergenerational Report, forecasts productivity growth to slump back to its 30-year, mediocre, long-term average by the middle of this decade—which is one year away. And what is the government doing about this disastrous outlook? On productivity, it is doing absolutely nothing. If you combine that forecast slump in productivity growth with the ageing of the population you get a startling result. By the year 2010 onwards that poisonous combination is expected to cause an almost halving of Australia's per capita GDP growth. This forecast slump in Australia's per capita GDP growth from the end of the decade onwards would constitute the slowest rate of improvement in measured living standards in Australia since the 1930s.

The government's own official documentation is forecasting a per capita GDP growth rate from the end of this decade not seen since the decade of the Great Depression. And they have only just woken up to it. They have an Intergenerational Report and last week they woke up to the need to address retirement incomes policy in Australia. And what was their response? They did a bit of tinkering here and there, and they attempted to appropriate the whole notion of a retirement incomes policy. They are attempting to appropriate for themselves the whole notion that superannuation is good when, for the last 15 years—or going back to 1981, in the case of the Prime Minister—they have expressed and displayed nothing but hostility to superannuation for the working men and women of this country. Over that entire period, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and other spokespeople have argued that superannuation should be the preserve of the privileged and not be available through the mechanisms that Labor has used to deliver superannuation to the working men and women of this country.

The prognosis on productivity is a slump in productivity growth from next year back to the 30-year, mediocre, long-term average after a record-breaking decade. So what is the government doing about productivity growth? Nothing. The three sources of modern productivity growth, as recognised around the world, are skills development, new ideas and infrastructure. This government has failed to invest in skills formation in this country—a fact that is recognised by the Productivity Commission. There has been no discernible contribution to productivity growth through skills formation over the last decade. What an indictment on this government. There has been no contribution from skills formation because there has not been any significant skills formation.

The government's contribution to all of this is that, over the 10 years to 2001-02, government spending on education fell from 4.3 per cent of GDP to 3.8 per cent of GDP. The Intergenerational Report forecasts further reductions in government spending on education. The government has done nothing about skills formation. A yawning gap has opened up in Australia's private sector investment in research and development, compared with that of the countries with which we compete. There is precious little in the way of infrastructure and in the other area—the ageing of the population—in which the government is tinkering.

There was a great opportunity for Australia in 1996 as a result of the second tranche of tax cuts that were converted into superannuation co-contributions. The most vandalistic action of this government, which has prejudiced the retirement incomes of generations of Australians, has been to cancel the co-contribution. Yet the Treasurer of this country says that the tax cuts that were promised by Labor were never delivered for one day or for one dollar. He said that 12 times in the parliament and many times in other places. It is a great Liberal lie. He has the temerity to speak about public ethics, in a matter of public importance, and about the importance of telling the truth. Give us a break!

That is what this Treasurer has been up to. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have displayed nothing but hostility to superannuation for the working men and women of Australia. Last week they discovered a problem, but they have never posed a solution because they do not believe in a retirement incomes policy for the working men and women of this country. They are vandals and they ought to be condemned for their vandalism for cancelling those co-contributions back in 1996 and for then having the temerity to lie about it.