Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will get there. The shadow foreign minister wants to reinstate $16 billion worth of foreign aid spending. In the last two days in question time we have heard—and we have heard it for the last 18 or 19 months—the allegation that we have cut $80 billion out of health and education. We want to spend $80 billion less than the previous government forecast over a 10-year period at a time in politics when the traditional four-year forward estimates and budgeting process has morphed into 'anything that costs a lot of money and we could not fund we moved into years five to 10'. That does not cut the mustard, and the results all the way through—up to and including ours, Member for Perth, show you why. That is what this House needs to get fair dinkum about and address. I am pleased that there is a bipartisan approach this afternoon. We need more of it. I noted with interest the member for Port Adelaide on the doorstop this morning being questioned about the $80 billion supposed cut—which is in fact $80 billion extra the opposition want to spend. When he got the question, 'Will you pay that money?', for the first time ever the member for Port Adelaide actually balked this morning. Why? The myth of this was exposed in question time very aptly by the Prime Minister.

The member for Perth mentioned local governments. They are part of the trifecta. We have a structural budget deficit, and what we need to be considering as a parliament now is tax reform and federation reform. The two taxes that have been proposed in the last six months by those opposite add up to $23 billion—over 10 years again, not four. That is not going to change the $57 billion black hole over four years as of the budget-in-reply speech—spread out to 10 years—and the $96 billion in school education and foreign aid spending that those opposite are still attempting to bash us about on a daily basis. We need considered tax and federation reform, and they do not happen in isolation. The member for Perth is right: local government is an important arm of government. It collected $14 billion last year across Australia in rates revenue. State government is an important level of government. Between stamp duty, land tax, payroll tax and mining royalties it received $90 billion worth of revenue last year. All three are operating in the same space on a day-in, day-out basis. We need to have the discussion about who does what and who pays for what.

The problem we have in this place, and the reason why 90 per cent of Australians at present hold us in such low esteem, is that when we attempt to have this conversation, which—and the intergenerational report belled the cat—is a conversation that will affect our children and grandchildren, as the member for Wannon said, over the next 40 years, both sides of politics default to a wedge position and scare campaigns. And both are complicit in it. We need a better quality of debate. The underlying number in the intergeneration report, which scares the living daylights out of me, is that over the next 40 years the 65-plus age bracket in this country will grow at three times the speed of the zero to 64 age category. Here is a newsflash. I do not know whether members have thought it this far through. The zero to 64 age bracket are our taxpayers; the 65 and over are our tax receivers. We have structural issues. Today we are doing something in a small way about it. There needs to be more bipartisanship, serious federation reform, serious tax reform, less wedge politics and fewer scare campaigns, for the sake of our children and our grandchildren.

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