Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I have spoken before about the culture of secrecy that lies at the heart of the Abbott government. Mr Abbott promised that he would lead an open, honest, transparent and accountable government. Yet, on the big issues, this government has been a black box. We have a Commission of Audit process which is potentially one of the most important pieces of work to be done by a body at any time this year. It is a piece of work that will inform the federal budget in May. It is a piece of work about which we know from the commissioners themselves that everything will be on the table: Medicare co-payments, cuts to the national disability support pension, the privatisation of Australia Post and huge cuts to the public sector. The list goes on and on.

Yet people are being deprived of that report. We do not shy away from a debate on the Commission of Audit process, but it has to be an open, honest and transparent debate, a debate based on facts, and a debate that clearly outlines the sort of country that we want to be. We have heard a lot of talk from this government about debt, deficit and the ongoing budget emergency. No claim has been too outrageous. According to the then opposition, the country has been drowning in debt, we are on track to mirror modern-day Greece, we are an international pariah and we have a third-world economy. Last year the Treasurer went so far as to say:

The cupboard is bare, there is no money left in the till.

That is essentially saying that we were bankrupt.

It is in this context that the National Commission of Audit was established. We saw the Business Council being represented with Tony Shepherd as the chair. It is remarkable that there was no space for people from the community sector, the health and welfare sector or from the union movement. We also had a brief from the government to the commission that was based on two assumptions: that there was a structural deficit that must be fixed—and this could only be achieved by cutting government expenditure—and that we could not add to the already high tax burden, so we had to make deep cuts, starting with Australia's public sector.

All this might sound okay at face value, except it is based on a lie. I am not sure where Senator Smith has been. He is part of the committee and has heard evidence that Australia's debt crisis is a myth. Our level of public debt is very low. Compared with other OECD countries, we are near the bottom in terms of public debt. Far from being in crisis, we are the envy of most other governments across the world. It is a confected emergency. We also learnt through the inquiry that Australia's deficit makes good sense when we have low interest rates, when infrastructure is so desperately needed and when we have a softening jobs market.

The evidence through the committee process gave lie to the fact that we have a crushing tax burden. As it happens, Australia's tax take as a percentage of our overall economy is below OECD averages and well below where it was when the Howard government was in power. We learnt that the Public Service, far from being bloated and inefficient, is actually very efficient by world standards. There is very little fat to be trimmed there.

The real picture about the Australian economy is at odds with what the government is saying. Economists by and large agree that government spending is low, debt is manageable, we are a relatively low-taxing country, the cost of living is not spiralling out of control and we have an efficient public service by world standards. Unfortunately, what we have is a Commission of Audit process where the rules have been rigged and the players have been hand-picked in order to achieve a predetermined outcome. That is a debate that serves our country very poorly.