Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I indicate to the House, and to the member for Melbourne in particular, that the coalition will not be supporting his amendment. It is not that we do not have sympathy for the sentiment, if I can put it that way, underlying his amendment; hence the second reading amendment which we moved before and the House divided upon. We are obviously concerned for families in the current environment. I will not repeat what I said in my previous contribution to the debate on this bill, but we are very concerned about the rising cost of living for Australian families and the impact that this measure will have on it.

However, as the minister indicated in her remarks previously, this amendment comes at a cost of $800 million. It is incumbent upon any party that wants to be taken seriously in the Australian polity to identify where it is going to find $800 million savings. That is the discipline which we in the coalition have taken upon ourselves. We have said that, if we are going to oppose measures which the government puts forward and that opposition will lead to a cost to the budget, we will identify where the savings are going to be made in the budget in order to compensate for that loss to the budget. I say to the honourable member for Melbourne and to the members of his party that, if they wish to be taken seriously in the Australian parliament, they too should exercise that discipline and identify where savings are going to be made for additional expenditure that they outline.

If we were not in this situation, where we have seen reckless expenditure from the government over the last four years, this measure would not be necessary. But the reality is that we have to deal with the situation we have at the present time, which is that we have a government which has put the country in hock with a major deficit and a ballooning debt. All of those things have to be taken into account and a response to any individual measure means that there has to be a corresponding indication of where the savings are. As the honourable member for Melbourne has not indicated where that $800 million will be made up then I say that if he wishes to bring forward measures like this it is the responsibility of the Greens to identify where those savings are going to be made. We have not identified where the savings are going to be made. In the future, if we are going to indicate that we disagree with an item which is effectively a saving to the Commonwealth budget and we are therefore going to impose more costs on the budget we will also identify where the savings account are going to be made up. I suspect that I am in furious agreement with the government on this matter as to the way in which the fiscal resources of the Commonwealth should be handled.

For those reasons we oppose this amendment. It is not for any lack of sympathy for the sentiment underlying what the honourable member for Melbourne has put forward by way of amendment and it is certainly not out of any lack of sympathy for the difficult situation that many families find themselves in these days with increasing costs of living, which have been driven up partly by the reckless expenditure of this government. Without rehearsing that argument here at this particular time, those are the reasons—

See this speech in context