HENSCHKE: Penny Wong, Finance Minister joins us now. Today Tony Abbott will be addressing a group of employers and one of the things we understand hes going to be saying is that when he gets into the office which he says hes going to be the next Prime Minister hes going to bring in a razor gang similar to the one of the first few years of the Howard-Costello Government. Penny Wong?
WONG: Good morning, how are you?
HENSCHKE: Very well.
WONG: Mr Abbott says hes ready to run the country and he says hes going to give a speech about the economy, so I think Australians, and certainly I, would look forward to seeing him actually tell us what hes going to do. At some point hes going to have to get beyond the slogans, and tell people what he actually wants to do were he to be elected.
HENSCHKE: Hes already said that one of the first things he would do would be to have an audit commission which seems like a pretty sensible idea, to go and have a look at the way money is being spent by the previous government, and then work out areas in which you could save money? Whats particularly wrong with that?
WONG: Well we already do that. I mean the reality is, the budget committee of the Cabinet does that at every budget and every mid-year review and weve made over $100 billion of savings over the budget since we came to office.
The reality is that Tony Abbott says, Im going to bring the Budget back to surplus but then he doesnt tell people how hes going to find the $70 billion worth of cuts to services to Australians that his own finance spokesperson says he needs.
Its time that Tony Abbott stopped making promises he cant deliver, stopped believing that slogans are a substitute for economic policy and was upfront with the Australian people about what hes proposing to do when it comes to the budget and the economy because that does matter to working families.
HENSCHKE: Well when you talk about working families, one of the things that Tony Abbott has said quite clearly is that hes going to assist working families with paid parental leave. Hes come out with a policy there. This is -
WONG: Lets talk about the working families. We are the Government that has introduced paid parental leave and 150 000 families are already getting it. Theyre the facts. Nothing ever happened when Tony Abbott was a Cabinet Minister under John Howard.
The additional scheme that Tony Abbott wants to introduce has been described by his own Liberal Party as a Rolls Royce scheme that advantages higher wealth individuals and whacks a tax on the economy to fund it. Its not good policy, its not supported by the Liberal Party, and the reality is it is yet another spending promise that Tony Abbott cant deliver. He refuses to be upfront with people about what his policies will cost and how hell fund them.
HENSCHKE: But getting back to this announcement today that he wants to bring in an audit commission in the first few years of the Howard-Costello Government they managed to find billions of dollars in savings. They went through Canberra and sorted out what they thought was a lot of fat there. I think the figure they saved was around $8 billion. Thats just good management, and prior to that you would have had a Labor Government in which said it had its own way of auditing; the Howard-Costello Government was able to find $8 billion.
WONG: But what has been announced is a process and what he hasnt announced is what hed do. I mean its very easy to announce to commission or a committee or a review, but the fact is, we have said we will fund these things and we have put them in the budget. And we have made some difficult savings decisions, including some which Tony Abbott originally opposed, in order to fund those things.
What Tony Abbott is doing is saying to people: look just trust me, I know that my shadow finance minister has said Ive got to find $70 billion worth of cuts thats the equivalent of Medicare for four years, but Im actually not going to tell you where Im going to find it. Im going to promise you tax cuts but the reality is, I know my budget position is such that I cant afford it. One thing I am going to ensure that Im going to deliver though is a tax cut for wealthy miners.
This is not good economic policy, it just shows how reckless he is.
HENSCHKE: Penny Wong, thanks for your thoughts this morning. Tony Abbott will give his thoughts to an employer group, a bit later on in the day and Tony Wright will give us his take on that when he comes up a little bit before 10 oclock this morning. Thanks to Penny Wong, Finance Minister.
ENDS