Wednesday, 27 August 2008: Alby Schultz, Federal Member for Hume, said, “Kevin Rudd admitted in Parliament yesterday that Australians are worse off since his Government’s election last November. “He did not dispute living expenses and uncertainty had increased over the past nine months and nor could he.

“Remember, Mr Rudd and his Treasurer spent the first months of their government talking up an ‘inflation crisis’” noted Mr Schultz. “Now we have business confidence at its lowest since 1991 – since the depths of the recession given by the last Labor government, a recession which Australians were told we had to have.

“Similarly, consumer confidence is the lowest it has been since 1991. In the first six months of this year, retail had the worst start that it has had in 30 years” said Mr Schultz.

“In the Sensis small business survey of 1,800 small businesses for May, only 10 per cent of 1,800 small businesses had confidence in the policies of the Rudd Labor government. Those 1800 small businesses employ 3.8 million Australians – over a third of the entire Australian workforce.

“Dun and Bradstreet surveyed business expectations for the September 2008 quarter – in other words, what does business expect; where is business confidence going?

“The survey shows that business has record lows in confidence for sales, for profits, for employment growth and for capital investment.

“What that means for average Australians is that the men and women in small business who take risks and who invest in the creation of jobs have a bleak outlook for Australia’s economic future for the next quarter and beyond.

“Who do you think created these new confidence lows?” asked Alby Schultz “What dud chickens ran around saying the sky was falling?

“As outlined in Malcolm Farr’s article (Hobart Mercury) today, ‘the Prime Minister blamed global factors and, to uproar in Parliament yesterday, also pointed to some of ‘the economic conditions we inherited’.

“But Labor did not mention that ‘the economic conditions we inherited’ included $19 billion of the $21 billion surplus that they say they “built” to fight inflation.

Mr Schultz pointed out, “Nobody noticed that while encouraging confidence, the previous Coalition government went quietly about its business, competently preparing to meet the constant global pressures on our economy. According to an Australia Institute analysis of Bureau of Statistics figures, the surplus could be significantly higher at $25.1 billion. The Australia Institute said the extra came from $3.5 billion in earnings from the Future Fund.

“This fund was set up by the Coalition government to fight inflationary pressures – a fund now demolished by Labor who have given themselves the power to spend it all.

“Yesterday Mr Rudd said in defence of current economic woes: ‘The global economic conditions which have come off the back of the global financial crisis … continue to wash through.’

“This is very similar to what the Coalition had said before and during the election, but Labor and Mr Rudd told working families that they could easily fix this.

“Now in government, has Labor just discovered the impact of the rest of the globe? Were they deliberately misleading the people of Australia just to win the election? Were they incompetent/inexperienced or were they simply telling spin?”