Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

There is something that we understand that I am afraid our political opponents do not—that is, if you want to spend money today, you should raise the money today. If you want to spend the money today, you should do everything you can to raise the money today. One of the challenges is that our political opponents did not do that. They spent in excess of $14 billion out of assumed revenue from the mining tax that raised hardly any money. So what happens? The government goes and borrows from the next generation in order to pay for handouts like the schoolkids bonus. Labor is still defending those sort of things even though we have to borrow money to pay for them. They do not understand. If you want to be responsible, and if you want to be responsible across the generations, it is the duty of everyone here to ensure that when we spend money we raise money and we do not go down the path of continuing to borrow money that at the end of the day our children are going to have to repay.

See this speech in context