Mr KATTER (12:26 PM) —I commiserate with the minister on this bill. With all due respect to him, I think there was a lack of sincerity and conviction. He is a barrister and he has been given a brief; he has to proceed with that brief. I am being very kind to him because to pass another judgment would be very harsh. What is actually taking place here? There is a famous saying: ‘Nero fiddled while Rome burned’. What happens when your current account is collapsing and you have no products to sell to the rest of the world because you are no longer competitive? The only thing we can sell to the rest of the world is minerals, and increasingly—I speak with authority, representing arguably the biggest minerals electorate in Australia—they are being exported without being processed. And the government claim credit for that. Well, I am afraid that when the world’s minerals double in value I hardly think that the government can claim credit for the world mineral prices doubling—unless they are restraining production in Australia.

Mr Barresi —Go on, Bob, get on to the bill!

Mr KATTER —You say that: I will. You should not have asked me to because now I will. A conservative government has doubled taxation in 10 years. I praise the government for restraint but it has doubled taxation. The honourable member for O’Connor has a painful look on his face. So he should; I would hate to be associated with a government that doubled taxation in the space of nine years. Somewhere on the opposition benches someone should have had a look at where the increases in expenditure were coming from. I will tell you: someone did. Belatedly, the Treasurer did. And he found out that the huge increase was coming in the area of disability and single parent pensions. While he is standing there skiting about having lowered unemployment, let us look at the brutal statistics. Yes, unemployment is 176,000 fewer than it was when this government came to power, but the number of people on disability pensions is up 196,000. So we all know exactly what this government did. The members of the opposition will not like this: it did exactly what Mr Keating did. It simply moved a group of people from that column over to this column and then skited about how that column had been reduced.

But the thing the government cannot cheat on is the budget. That is its problem. And the Treasurer is now being told the blunt truth: that the government cannot afford any further increases in the field of social welfare. If you look at the budget, the only two items that have seen an increase above the CPI are health—and we praise the government for that—and social welfare. The increase in the health budget is nowhere near the ballpark of the increase in social welfare. In 1994-95, the year before this government took office, spending on social welfare was $44,000 million—36 per cent of the federal budget. It is now 43 per cent of the federal budget and nearly $90,000 million—$88,000 million to be exact.

What we have done is destroy our productive economy. Our manufacturing and agricultural base is collapsing completely. I just got back from a visit to Adelaide. The one single success story we had was with wine, and the wine industry is now going through the floor at 100 miles an hour. That was the only success story we had left in agriculture; all the other agricultural industries have gone down.

I rang a manufacturer yesterday and I said that I was really pleased to see that he was still producing a product that he produces. I do not have permission to use the bloke’s name. He said: ‘Bob, don’t get carried away. We had 70 employees last year; we had 150 the year before; next year we will have one employee. How can we compete against China?’ These people removed the subsidies and tariffs; we must close down all manufacturing in this country. I think I could get use of the bloke’s name.

There is not a member in this place who does not know that that is the truth. The manufacturing sector in this country has been completely destroyed by what Mr Keating did and what has followed with this government. We are seeing the results of it today. The government is running around brutalising young women who are trying to raise two or three kids by themselves and forcing them back into the work force. The hypocrisy of the people on the government side of the chamber! They call themselves Christians and then proceed to do those things! (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Lindsay)—I have to apologise to the member for Corangamite for not calling him earlier—but he is a Victorian!