(Queensland—Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) What we have been seeing on the TV with the depression in the stock market is an indicator of the problem to come; it is not the problem that is here at the moment. It is the harbinger of what is coming. It is the harbinger of where the real grief will happen when people really are out of work. But what is Australia going to do? It is going to put $8.7 billion in people’s bank accounts in some vain belief that buying flatscreen televisions and a whole range of other consumer items is somehow going to stimulate the Chinese economy or the US economy and reboot the whole show. I do not believe for one second that Treasury ever gave you any advice like that. We know that this was done with no modelling. I do not know if you have done modelling already. Maybe that is a question that can be asked later on. Have you ever done any modelling on this package or is it still out there in never-never land as a marvellous idea? This is going to cause immense conjecture among the Australia people about exactly what you are up to.

What I do want to know is: what is your turn of the cycle? You are at the start of your government and you have already spent the surplus. We are heading into what we know is going to be a decisive and traumatic economic period. Where do you see the cycle at? What is your forecast for when we start to get unemployment at six or seven per cent? How are you going to handle that and where is the money going to turn up from? How are you going to deal with the matter-of-fact, day-to-day occurrences of an economy which I think costs about $1 trillion a year to run? Where are these funds going to come from? In spending this money are you going to look at more cuts in other areas? Are the amorphous and nebulous efficiency dividends suddenly going to appear again at Senate estimates? Will they turn into other new and fantastic amounts which no one has a clue how we are going to meet? This is the form of Labor government management. It follows a path from the Fuelwatch scheme and the ridiculous 36-hour scenario. Everyone is charging around in frantic anticipation of delivering a package when they do not have a clue what it is going to do — and, when they actually deliver it, it does absolutely nothing and has to be parked away in a cupboard. Fuelwatch was a precursor of what was about to come with GroceryWatch, with the Royal Australian Navy being parked over Christmas and with the government spending half the surplus in one fell swoop. This is starting to show a consistency in exactly what this government is. At the same time, we have the Prime Minister’s overseas travels. Everyone understands that the Prime Minister has to travel but, my gosh, does he have to travel this much? Is he ever here? This all starts to show a sense of disjunction, of distraction, of running away from a problem. You should do the hard yards at home before you go visiting people overseas. It is of great concern in terms of exactly where this nation is going.

It was peculiar to go through the fiscal multiplier of this. For those who are still listening to this, the fiscal multiplier means the dollar return in the economy from every dollar you spend. Does a dollar spent equal another dollar? At the very best, Mr Gruen tells us, it is dollar for dollar. But that premise does not work because people are buying imported goods in a retail infrastructure that is already present. It does not work because certain people might actually put the money in the bank, in which case it will have no effect. It does not work if someone just squanders it in one fell swoop, by reason of social conditioning, which unfortunately causes the exploitation of people who line up with money in their bank accounts. I would happily take Labor Party members who wish to go on a journey, a little trip, around a few places to see exactly how this money will be spent, if they are honest enough to recognise it. I plead with them: even if you are going to go forward with this package, please break it up into smaller components over a period of time because, if you do not, those who are vulnerable will spend it, but they will not spend it in the form of the economy that you anticipated.

Senator Conroy interjecting—

Senator JOYCE—I do not know why you have that fascinated look on your face, Senator Conroy. You know that is the case. It was you, Senator Conroy, who said during Senate estimates that this decision was a government decision. So it is a government decision, and the government will have to accept the responsibility for what happens next. The surplus is gone. The ramifications economically are zero. The social impacts in some areas are going to be atrocious. The political benefit ultimately will fall into our laps, because the thing will not work. And what is going to be the response then? Is that when we will get the change of Treasurer that everyone is anticipating? Is that when that will happen? Are we going to load poor old Mr Swan up with this and send him over the cliff as the scapegoat on this issue?

Why couldn’t we have foreshadowed the stimulus through certain things as infrastructure, certain things that we can inspire the Australian nation with—a future cashflow, so that people can load up and start preparing for a future cashflow? You do not even have a clue at this point in time about what your contingent liability is on your banking guarantee. Ultimately, if you have to borrow money because you have squandered the money, people are going to ask the question: what sort of contingent liabilities are out there for them when they lend money to the Australian people? You do not have a clue what it is. What is the value of your guarantee? How much does it cost? Does anyone know? They will be the questions that the people who lend you the credit will be asking you, and that will be what affects your margin on the money they lend you. And they will be lending us money. They will be lending us money, I predict, within 12 months because we will have run this nation into a deficit. And, if this plays out the way the world perceives it will, that will not even be the start of a period of great financial hardship throughout the world. I hope and pray that it is not. I hope and pray that we get out and that it finishes as quickly as possible, but it is going to be harder for Australia than it should have been, because what we built up over such a long period of time and the condition in which we gave the nation to the next government have been completely squandered within 12 months.

This is going to be a real test for the Labor Party, first, of whether they have the courage to change the form in which this payment turns up. They must acknowledge that the form in which it turns up in so many areas is going to be a social disaster. Do they have the courage at least to mitigate that effect, or do they pretend that they have an excuse for why certain families and certain households—certain working families—deserve that sort of blight to be brought home to them on 8 December? Do they have the honesty to come into the chamber and tell us what the long-term plan is because this money has gone—where they are going to be borrowing the money from, how much it is going to cost us and what the effect is on the Australian people by reason of other decisions that the government have made? Do they have the strength to politically stand behind their decision in the long term, or will they be looking for an out clause, an excuse, a reason as to why it was not their fault and it is someone else’s fault now? Will they have some other nebulous, nefarious reason why they are no longer at the helm of the economy and they are just another passenger on their own train to destitution? It is always the way. I come from the state of Queens