Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have just heard from the member for Fowler, and one thing I will say in response is that what is shameful is the lack of truth we are hearing from members opposite. Australian families know that if they run their household spending more than they earn year after year they go broke. Australian families know that if a government spends billions of dollars more than it earns year after year then eventually that country goes backwards. The Leader of the Opposition in this debate earlier talked about the truth. Let us talk about the truth, and the truth came from the words of the member for Lilley, the former Treasurer. He told the former Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, that the fiscal situation under the Labor Party was ruinous. One of the reasons that the member for Lilley is not on the shadow frontbench is because if he was he would have to address those questions. He fundamentally failed. Year after year the deficits mounted up: $27 billion, $54 billion, $47 billion, $43 billion, $19 billion, and in the current year almost $50 billion. It is a shameful record and we cannot forget that the admission comes from the former Treasurer. He admitted that the fiscal situation was ruinous. If you look deep into your hearts, members opposite, you know that is the truth and Australians know that is the truth and that is why we were elected, to fix Labor's mess, and that is what we are doing. Let us not forget that unless we make the policy changes that we are making we are heading towards $667 billion in debt. We will pay unless we make those critical changes that our nation needs almost $3 billion a month in interest payments. Currently we are paying more than $1 billion every month in interest.

Today I want to try and correct the record in a number of important respects and reflect on what our budget is doing to support Australian families, their children and grandchildren. We have a strong focus on earning, learning and working for the dole which has been celebrated in my community in the Corangamite and Geelong regions. We are supporting older Australians' return to work with an important restart incentive of $10,000. We are providing greater access to higher education, for the first time offering fee loans to sub-bachelor and other pathway degrees. As Mike Gallagher, the executive director of the Group of Eight universities, said:

The higher education budget reforms are necessary. They are logical, coherent, sustainable, equitable and inevitable …

We are building the roads of the 21st century. In my electorate we are upgrading the Great Ocean Road. We have invested $3 billion in the East West Link, a project that would deliver more than 6,000 jobs. Can you believe it: Labor is opposing both of those very important projects. We are abolishing the carbon and mining taxes. Under our budget, yes, the pension goes up twice a year, and let us not forget how misleading the Labor Party has been on this point. It was the Labor Party that is delivering an increase in the pension age to 67, so we are seeing constant hypocrisy. Education is going up by total of 37.4 per cent over four years. Health spending is up each year over four years: nine per cent, nine per cent, nine per cent and six per cent. I want to set the record straight in relation to sole parents. A sole parent on an average wage of $60,000 by 2016-17 with one child under six will receive government payments of $7,340, for two children under six a government payment of $12,630 per year and for two to children between the ages of six and 13 government payments of $8,348. That does not include the childcare rebate, it does not include rental assistance.

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