Topics: Liberal leadership spill, Sydney protests

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: All right. Time catch up with the shadow assistant minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, Senator Dave Sharma. Uh, Dave, parliament wrapped up yesterday, Friday. Pretty cruisey day, not much going on.

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DAVE SHARMA: Good morning, Stephen. There's been an unscheduled and surprise party set for this morning, so I'm actually just on my way up to parliament now.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Well, I don't think it was that big a surprise. But I ... Look, I do want to talk about some real issues that came out of Senate Estimates this week. And look, there were media reports last week that there'd been a $57.7 billion, uh, blowout in the the federal budget. It turns out it was only $54 billion, but the government went to great pains to cover up that they're actually $3 billion better off than we thought they were.

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DAVE SHARMA: They did and that came out at Senate Estimates, yesterday. Uh, officials from the Department of the Treasury confirmed that it was $54 billion, but that was like, pulling teeth to be honest with you. It was a lot harder than it should've been. And in the government's, MYEFO, the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook Update that comes out in December, those figures were only available not in the charts. You sort of had to download the data and crunch through the numbers yourself to see what the deterioration had been between the pre-election budget, if you like, or fiscal outlook and this one. And it shows that $54 billion has been added to the budget bottom line in, in 10 years, in just the space of six months.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: So Dave, is this a result of the fact that 'Cause one of the criticisms that people have had of the RBA lately is they're looking at, they're using, uh, treasury figures, to base their decisions on. Is this part of that same rubbery treasury figures?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, I ... Look, I don't think the treasury figures were wrong, but I think in the, the MYEFO, as it's called, that mid-year outlook, great pains were went, gone to. And I think, by the political class, not the bureaucratic class, to basically mask that figure or hide it or bury it so deep that it took several weeks of forensic work to actually put it together. But, in the RBA here, who I spoke with yesterday, they confirmed a very dire outlook for the economy, where economic growth's only set to be about 1.6%. Inflation's going to remain outside the target band. That's even banking in basically two further interest rate rises. Yeah, that's a very dire economic outlook for Australia. It's the slowest rate of growth I think we would've had in outside of a recession in 20, 25 years.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: And it's extraordinary too that we now hear that we're very fast approaching a trillion dollars worth of debt It’ll happen before the budget in May. The government's been telling us for four years that they inherited a trillion dollars worth of debt from the previous government, but we haven't actually got there yet, but we are going to get there on their watch.

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DAVE SHARMA: That's right. It was confirmed this week that current government securities on issue, which is, federal government debts, $993 billion. And it's growing. Each week some debt comes off, treasury bonds mature, and then more debt is treasury bonds are sold. I think it's probably at the moment it looks like March or April that we will hit $1 trillion in debt, which is massive. And we weren't at that level in the pandemic. It's the highest absolute number we'll have ever been to, and there's no end in sight. The budget is not returning to surplus anytime in the next decade on this government's own projection, which means we're going to be continually adding to that debt figure. And, at the moment we pay $70 million a day on interest on that debt, and that price is going up because the interest rates are going up in Australia and the premium that investors demand to hold Australian government debt is going up. So that's $70 million that could be spent on roads or infrastructure or hospitals or schools that we're paying in interest instead.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: If by some miracle, the coalition, whatever form it might take by the next election, happens to win though, how do you do this? Because there's not enough waste. There's not a billion a trillion dollars' worth of waste that can be trimmed.

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DAVE SHARMA: No, look, there's two things though that we need to focus on. one is getting the economy growing more quickly, because when your economy grows more quickly, people are less dependent on the government for employment handouts, whatever it might be. But also you take more tax revenue as a size of, as the economy gets bigger, your share of piece of the pie gets bigger. And the other thing though is we need to impose some fiscal discipline, because what we've seen is that government spending is growing at about four times the rate of the economy. And what that's doing is it's competing and crowding out the private sector, which means businesses find it more expensive to hire workers or to buy goods or to get a lease or any other number of other things. And we're ... public sector is basically outcompeting the private sector, but it's the private sector that's the engine room of economic growth in this country.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: I guess, tied into all of this, there's going to be an outside review of the Australian Office of Financial Management. What do you expect to come of this and what's the, what's the rationale?

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DVE SHARMA: Well, look, I think there has been very high staff turnover in… it's about a 40-person office and about 20 people have been made redundant, gone, been taken a voluntary redundancy in the last 12 months. And I think there's been publicised very serious morale concerns inside that agency. Now, that might sound well, it's like an inside Beltway issue, but this is the agency that manages our debt, $993 billion of it has to issue it in the markets. And how effective it is at doing its job determines whether we can still borrow from the markets and the price we're paying for that borrowing. And I think for that reason, it's a ... it's an incredibly important office and I think this review, which is being led by a former RBA deputy governor Guy Debelle is designed to ensure the organization is, is fit for purpose with that level of staff turnover and with the morale problems it's quite clearly had.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Now, Dave, we have to talk about the elephant in the room, given that you're, you're the only one, member of the party room that wants to put their head above the parapet today. Nine o'clock, you go into party room, 'cause I mean, there's two parts to this. Firstly, there's gotta be a vote to say whether or not you want to spill the, well vacate the, the leadership positions. Then, there'll be a second vote, well three votes in, in a sense. One for the leader and one for the deputy leader. Will you be supporting the spill motion?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I've taken a position, Stephen, and I hope you and your listeners understand, that I don't publicly comment on which way I'm voting on, on any of these votes. And that's because the most important thing to me is whoever emerges as the leader at the end of today, whether it's Sussan Ley who retains the leadership or Angus Taylor who becomes the leader, the most important thing we need to do as a party is get behind their leadership. And it's not helpful to that cause if people can mark us down in one column or the other. I think it's important that we're as united as possible coming out of this, whatever the result is. And I want to work with whoever the leader is and make sure that their leadership is a success. And it's important that all of my colleagues do the same.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Whether there's a leadership change or not today surely you've got to agree that there has to be some sort of circuit breaker? There's got to, something has got to change because these polling figures are becoming absolutely dire.

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, that's right. And, and the polling figures, I mean, look, they're, they're important but they reflect a more, something of, of greater importance, which is the public is losing faith in, our ability to hold the Labor government to account and be a credible opposition. And that's the two tasks we've been sent here to do by our communities and our constituents. And so we do need to change direction. And, leadership is important for that but I've, as I've often said, politics is a team sport. Uh, and if you can have the best captain or the worst captain in the world, but it's often the performance of the team underneath that captain that makes all the difference. And if the team is united, it's kicking towards the same goal, it's operating in a coordinated fashion, it's not tackling one another for the ball but focused on the opposition, then we'll do a better job. And so, I think we do need a, a pretty clear change in direction. And we do need to make sure, we'll reconnect with the public and show them that we are serious and credible.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: I've always argued that, you guys are at your least productive when you're here in Canberra. And if you spent more time in your electorates, you might be, more in tune with what the public is saying. I think four times a year is plenty for you guys to come down here. But it's going to be a bit more often than that.

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DAVE SHARMA: Yeah, look, at the moment, it's about 20 or 21 weeks a year. I, look, I, I tend to, Look, there's important things we have to do in Parliament, Senate Estimates, which has been on this week, is about holding the government and the government departments to account and scrutinising their spending. And I think that's an important, important role. But look, some of Parliament, I, I tend to agree. And I think, I always appreciate getting back to my home state of New South Wales, connecting with voters there, and hearing what's on their mind, 'cause that's ultimately what keeps you anchored and focused as a politician.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Now, I know you've got to be in party room in 11 minutes, so I just wanna quickly touch on one other thing. President Herzog visit, the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, some of, the protests were extraordinary with calls for globalizing the Intifada. I tend to think a lot of these people don't actually know what that means. Am I being too generous?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think you are, Stephen. I mean, if, if you look at the protests at Sydney Town Hall, earlier this week, when there was only, it's a significant number, about 7,000, but it was a 7,000 very focused activists. And I think people like that, when they're saying globalize the Intifada, I think they know what it means. I mean, an intifada is an armed uprising against a civilian population. That's the common understanding of the term. And I, I would've thought, I would've hoped after the Bondi massacre, that people suddenly realize that going around chanting phrases like that, Bondi encapsulated what globalize the Intifada means. And are people really saying that they want to see more of that in Australia? If they are, that's a very chilling sentiment.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: No doubt about that. Dave, good luck, at nine o'clock. We'll catch up again soon.

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DAVE SHARMA: Okay. Nice to talk to you, Steven.

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STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: All the best. Senator Dave Sharma.

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[ENDS]