Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Oh, sorry, the Greens have an answer for how we are going to balance the budget. I am so sorry, Mr Acting Deputy President, the Greens are going to balance the budget. They are going to save the next generation. I am so sorry! The Greens are not going to actually tell us anything—they never do—about economic responsibility.

Let me just say this: the Labor Party act like spoilt teenagers. They ran around for six years spending money on the credit card—spending money that this country did not have. When the public finally said, 'Actually, we've got to start paying back some of that debt'—do you know what?—the Labor Party squealed like spoilt children. The Labor Party created the bloody problem that the world now has, and when we come along and try to solve the problem they blame us. They created the problem. People like Senator Cameron have no idea about how to balance a budget or make responsible economic decisions for the next generation of Australians. It is disgraceful. For someone like Senator Cameron to come in here and cast aspersions on our side of politics about young Australians is a disgrace.

For six years the Australian Labor Party lived beyond their means. They were getting record tax revenues, but even that was not enough. They had to engage in record borrowing to finance their record spending. I am assuming—and perhaps this is a bad assumption to make; perhaps I should not assume this—that everyone believes a government should manage its spending. Maybe I cannot assume that. But I am assuming that people, the current generation, think that Australia should live within its means. I am assuming that, but I know that the Labor Party never say much about this—and the Greens certainly will not—but we on this side of the chamber believe that for economic and moral reasons our generation should live within its means. They never say that. They have not got the guts to make that commitment. This is so disgraceful!

In the chambers of the parliaments throughout the Western world since the 1970s, economies, lives and futures have been destroyed by governments that could not live within their means. I cannot say it any more clearly. I just wish to God that the Labor Party and the Australian Greens would learn that lesson, but they just cannot learn the lesson that generations should live within their means. It is simple. Sure, you might have some infrastructure spending—and I accept that—but that is not the problem in this country. It is actually recurrent expenditure which is the problem. We are simply living beyond our means.

There are only three options. It is not that complicated: you rein in spending, you increase taxes or you keep borrowing money. Mr Acting Deputy President, do you know what the left say? It is always 'keep borrowing' or maybe 'raise taxes'—but it is usually 'keep borrowing'. Why? Because the electoral pain is actually very small. The democratic incentive is always to put more money on the credit card. That is the easy choice. It would be so easy for the coalition to say: 'We'll just borrow a bit more. We wouldn't feel it. We'd hardly feel it. It wouldn't matter much. The exchange rate wouldn't change much.' But you know who will be stuck with the bill, don't you? We would be all right. It is okay for me: I would be fine. But the bill would be paid by our children and our grandchildren. It is so disgraceful to hear that Australian Labor Party basically do not care. They talk about 'ripping it out from higher education, health and welfare'. I accept that difficult decisions are going to have to be made. I accept that; I do. Someone has to make those tough choices. That is what good government is about. It is not always easy. It is so much easier just to keep borrowing money and maybe tax a bit more. That is the easy way out.

Do you know what? I can prove it is the easy way out, because every country in western Europe did it, and North America also did it. Look where they are now. They are buggered. Their economies are buggered because they simply have no idea about how to pay back the debt. It is absolutely disgraceful. And they do not mind. Do you know why? Because they are really concerned about the voters of today, not the voters of tomorrow. They want to somehow win votes, so they do not want to cut too much, so basically they will borrow a bit more money, in a sense to support their vote. Our children and our grandchildren do not get to vote yet. By the time they do get to vote, governments will have come and gone, and yet the debt will remain.

I say again: the greatest contribution that Peter Costello ever made to this country was not being a successful Treasurer, balancing the budget and doing all those wonderful things he did; in my view, it was highlighting to a generation of public policy analysts and policymakers that intergenerational inequity is intergenerational theft and that, if we do not live within our means, if we do not raise the money, the taxes that we need to live on then we are stealing from the next generation. Sure, you could quibble at the sides about infrastructure—I accept all that—but that is at the sides. That is not the problem the Labor government had and it is not the problem that the Western world is faced with.

The great, depressing fact about this debate, every time we have it, is: the Labor Party and the Greens never learn. That is what gets me. It is not that it has happened; it is that they never learn. Since 1901, every time Labor leaves office we are further in debt. Because we have an ageing population and productivity is not rising sufficiently, it is going to get worse. There are more and more claims upon the public purse. My friend Senator Fifield looks after the National Disability Insurance Scheme and other schemes, many of them worthwhile. I am not suggesting for a second it is not worthwhile, but we just cannot afford everything we want. That is my point.

Every time I hear Senator Cameron or someone from the Labor Party or someone from the Greens whingeing about savage cuts, I think: how savage is it to cut the future, to cut the prospects of our young people, our children and our grandchildren? How savage is that? What they are doing to the kids of the future is far, far worse than any cuts that might be made by this government, because at least if we make cuts we are answerable at a general election. That is true. The Australian people can say, 'We don't like that,' and they can vote us out, as they should be able to. There is a problem, though, with the Left and the way they operate. Do you know what they do? They put it on the credit card, and the people that they are harming do not get to vote yet. That is the great horror. That is the lack of democratic incentive in the entire approach that the Left have gloried in since World War II. They have absolutely made a mint out of this process. Why do you think social democracy has been so successful electorally? Because the current generation that is spending the money does not foot the bill. If we have to cut, at least we will be accountable for it. When they spend money we do not have, they are not accountable for it and our children's futures are affected and in some cases destroyed. (Time expired)