Lenore Taylor, political editor
Monday 1 December 2014
Prime minister reflects on a week that culminated in a Coalition election loss in Victoria and recommits to stalled budget measures
Asked about the ballooning budget deficit, Tony Abbott said the budget emergency started to abate as soon the Coalition was elected. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
Tony Abbott thinks voters will eventually reward the Coalition for its “guts” and “strength” but admits his government’s recent performance has been “ragged”, that he broke a promise on ABC funding and that in the end the “buck” will stop with him.
The prime minister’s 45-minute Monday press conference was apparently designed to try to reset the political debate for the final week of parliamentary sittings and portray conviction to his nervous colleagues after the Coalition’s disastrous showing in the Victorian election.
But his only concession was to backtrack on reductions in defence force allowances – a move already flagged in the weekend media and rejected by Jacqui Lambie, who has said she will vote against all government legislation until the government increases its below-inflation ADF pay offer.
Despite no indication that any of the budget measures stalled in the Senate are likely to pass, Abbott revealed the government intended to take the same budget impasse into the new year.
And despite predictions the budget deficit is likely to be $5bn worse this year than the forecast in May, and despite saying he would propose “no massive additional savings”, Abbott also insisted “the budget emergency started to abate the instant the government was elected to deal with it”.
He said confidence had returned to the economy and the country as soon as the Coalition was elected, because it was like a fire engine showing up at the scene of the blaze.
Repeatedly putting his hands on his chest, the prime minister said he was “the first to admit that last week was a bit of a ragged week” but insisted “whatever faults this government has, no one can accuse us of lacking courage.”
“It’s been a year when this government has demonstrated guts, commitment and strength of character on a whole host of issues,” he said, nominating the downing of MH17 and “responding to the closure down the track of Holden and Toyota”.
Asked about the blocked budget savings, he said “we absolutely stand by them”, indicated the savings from the unlegislated measures would be included in the mid year economic budget update to be revealed later this month.
He said the government “always had and always will support” the $7 GP-co-payment – which only last week some government sources nominated as a “barnacle” that was to be shelved.
“The general rule is we persist with the budget measure as announced … until we decide that there is an alternative way forward which, under all of the circumstances, makes sense. The circumstances obviously include the particular composition of the Senate at the moment.
“Plainly there are some things which are going to have a lot of difficulty in the Senate. We stand by them,” he said.
He said he believed the government’s problems were mostly caused by “bad atmospherics” and that “in the end substance trumps atmospherics”.
“Obviously I take responsibility for everything in the end. I mean, the buck stops here. That’s the way it is in our democracy. The buck stops with the party leader. In respect of the government, the buck stops with me so I take full responsibility,” he said.
Asked about his pre-election promise that there would be “no cuts to the ABC”, Abbott said “I accept what we are doing with the ABC is at odds with what I said immediately prior to the election but things have moved on, circumstances are different. Going into that election, the then government was telling us the deficit for that year would be $18bn, it turned out to be $48 billion. I think sensible governments are not only entitled but, indeed, expected to change when the circumstances change.”
And he defended his personal office against mounting internal criticism about centralised control and poor strategy.
“The first thing to say is that I stand by my office,” he said. “It’s a very good office. My office is essentially the same office that got us from nowhere to election parity in 2010 and gave us a very strong victory in 2013.
“I stand by my office, I stand by all the senior members of my office.”
On the decision by Victorian voters to oust the Liberal state government after just one term, Abbott said the federal government’s “big contributions” to Victoria had been the $3bn promised to the East West Link road – which the victorious Labor government has promised not to build – and the royal commission into union governance and corruption.
