Chris Bowen calls Barnaby Joyce’s claims ‘ill-judged rhetoric’ after he says hospitals will close if budget measures not passed

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Claims that Australia will run out of money if budget measures aren’t passed have been dismissed as “ill-judged rhetoric” by the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen. His comments come after agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce said Australia will be unable to defend itself and will have to close hospitals in 10 to 15 years.

The opposition leader Bill Shorten also said this first sitting week after the parliamentary winter break was the time to “drop” the controversial budget, but declined to outline Labor’s alternative or name a timeframe for when the budget should be brought back to surplus.

Joyce said on Monday that if the finances of the nation aren’t turned around, “we’ll be closing hospitals, we won’t have an ABC, we won’t be able to defend ourselves because we will have run out of money”.

“Now the only way you can fix it is to fix it early, this is our first budget, I understand the concerns people have, I fully understand them, but what is our alternative?,” Joyce told ABC radio.

“We either accept that we’ve got a debt problem and we’ve got to turn it around or we basically say ‘No, this is only a small melanoma on our arm and if we just wait long enough, it’ll go away.’ No, as a financial melanoma, it will kill you.”

Addressing media in Canberra, shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said Joyce is “just the latest in a long line of cabinet ministers who haven’t adjusted to being in government”.

Bowen warned Joyce “when you’re a senior cabinet minister your words count”.

“We’ve seen Joe Hockey talking about budget emergencies. We’ve seen Andrew Robb talking about sovereign risk in the budget. Now we see Barnaby Joyce reverting to his old role as shadow finance minister which he was sacked from when he made similar sorts of comments,” said Bowen.

“What we’re seeing is shrill and irresponsible and ill-judged rhetoric from the government, from the treasurer and his colleagues, which are having an impact on confidence in the community. And which are extremely irresponsible.”

Bowen said the government has moved from “insulting” to “threatening” the Australian people.

“The rolling farce of the government’s lack of a budget strategy reached a low point on the weekend with the government resorting to threats, only they’re so incompetent they can’t work out what the threat is,” he said, citing Cormann’s comments on the weekend that the government could be left with no choice but to raise taxes if budget measures weren’t passed, and Hockey’s warning earlier this month that he may take “emergency action” and introduce Queensland-style austerity measures.

“So Mathias Cormann’s great strategy is to say we will have budget tax increase if you don’t pass our budget, which includes tax increases. This budget strategy has been a rolling farce,” said Bowen.

Shorten said the government was “desperate” and “keen to draw attention away from its unfair budget, threatening Australian people with tax rises, threatening cuts in medical research.”

“This is an unfair budget. No three-word slogan will save this budget. It’s time to dump the budget and dump it now,” he said.

In the press conference Shorten twice declined to give a timeline for returning the budget to surplus.

“I think that first of all the government needs to explain their timeframe for introducing legislation,” he replied, pointing to higher unemployment and low business confidence since “the government started leaking details of their unfair budget”.

Asked again, Shorten said: “This government has no plan seriously to improve the economic position. We are not going to let the government off the hook.”

On Monday Hockey said many budget measures are already through parliament and the government is now negotiating with crossbench senators on those that aren’t.

“Despite the obstructionism of Labor and the Greens, who have offered no solutions of their own, this government is calmly getting on with the job of running the country and negotiating a sustainable budget that will safeguard services into the future,” Hockey wrote in an Australian Financial Review op-ed.

Palmer United Party senator Glenn Lazarus told Brisbane radio on Monday morning he is determined the $7 co-payment will not pass.

“I don’t think we are in a time when we need to be paying to see the doctor,” he told 4BC.

Lazarus said Australians are “too overtaxed”, and that any attempt by the government to introduce new taxes would be “political suicide”.

Adam Bandt, the deputy leader of the Greens, said the government is “threatening the economic integrity of the economy” and needs to scrap the budget and “go back and start again”.

“We will not have a gun held to our head in an attempt to force people to vote for cuts to university funding and to put students into further debt,” Bandt told media in Canberra.

“When you said there would be no cuts to education or health, many people believed you and they want the parliament to hold Tony Abbott to that promise.”