Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today it's a privilege to be able to talk about the important impact that this government is having on the Goldstein electorate and, by extension, the great nation of Australia. When you think about the challenges that confront our great nation, no matter what the challenge, none is overcome without an economy that is healthy and strong. A strong economy is at the heart of everything that we need, as a country, to be able to deliver—the human dividend, the social dividend, the economic dividend and the environmental dividend—so that the next generation of Australians can grow up with the opportunities that their forebears have had before them. This allows them to get good childcare support in their early years and a good education throughout their youth and into their adulthood, particularly as part of tertiary education, but, more critically, to then be able to go on and get a job to support themselves and, hopefully, in time, a family, and then support their community as part of our great nation.

As people live through different stages of life, yes, they need support and opportunity to be able to realise their maximum ambition as citizens, but, as they move towards their later years, what they need is security—security in being able to be sure and confident that what modest investments they may have will deliver them a return to provide for them for as long as they live so that they can fund the health care and support services they need at a vulnerable stage of life and, more critically, at a stage of life where they are not able to change their circumstances. But none of that can be provided without a strong economy. None of that can be provided unless we have an economy that creates jobs and opportunities so that people can pay taxes to support those people who are less able than themselves or who need those critical supports in that time of life when they're vulnerable and need assistance and can't change their circumstances. This is at the heart of what this government is about. This is a government that is focused on how we deliver that sense of opportunity and security for every Australian at every stage of life. I see that day after day in the Goldstein electorate.

Last Friday night I was down at The Village Early Learning Centre opening in Sandringham in the Goldstein electorate, where people have seen an opportunity for investment and taken a risk to set up a second childcare centre, in addition to the one they established in Tulip Street, Sandringham. That community facility, that business, provides the opportunity for young Australians to be given the childcare support under this government's childcare support package and reform so that they can have the best chance at life. But only down the road, if you go to local aged-care facilities—and I was privileged to be able to go to Abberfield in Sandringham as well recently with the Minister for Aged Care—people at a different stage of life are seeking to retire with dignity and security and with the healthcare services that they need to live a life that they see as acceptable and comfortable.

The only way to achieve that is through a strong economy, and that is what this government is delivering day after day. You may be tired of it, as other people may be as well, but the simple reality, and an often repeated statistic, is that a million jobs have been created during the life of this government. That means that we have not only, off the back of significant welfare reforms, taken people from consuming the benefits of the tax system to being able to sustain themselves; we have enabled an opportunity, an environment and an economy where people have gone from consuming the benefits of the tax system to being contributors themselves.

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