Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Government's spending will reach its highest level outside of recession since 1986;

(b) since the Government came to office, it has added $100 billion to the national debt, set to breach $1 trillion this financial year and $1.2 trillion by the time of the next election;

(c) the Government's new decisions since coming to office total a shocking $22 billion, and had the Government shown any fiscal discipline to find savings to fund the new commitments, the Government would be delivering a healthy surplus today;

(d) we are spending $50,000 on interest every minute, which is money that cannot be spent on essential services;

(e) the persistence in inflation has pushed out the prospect of further interest rate relief with markets now expecting it may be 'one and done', that is, for interest rates to remain at around 3.25 per cent indefinitely, little more than one rate cut lower than the current level; and

(f) millions of Australian mortgage holders will have repayments on the average mortgage set to remain at $1,700 higher per month indefinitely under this Government than under the previous Government; and

(2) calls on the Government to reintroduce the quantifiable fiscal rules that every recent government of either political persuasion has adopted, and to heed the calls of leading economists like former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, and former Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Phillip Lowe, as well as leading international organisations like the International Monetary Fund to introduce such rules.

Government spending has an impact on all Australians, but we need to remember as lawmakers, and the government need to remember every time they look to spend money, that it's not their money; it's taxpayer money. It's the community's money. Every dollar raised was earnt by someone—a factory worker in Casey, a farmer or a small-business owner who has taken an risk.

It is important and so crucial for the health of the country and the health of the community that that taxpayer money is spent well. Unfortunately, in Australia today we have a treasurer who has clearly lost the confidence of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister clearly has no confidence in the Treasurer, and that is a dangerous situation for our country. We know that because the Treasurer had to stand two weeks ago and backtrack on his biggest commitment when it came to raising revenue in the budget, the superannuation changes. The Prime Minister was clever. He asked, or ordered, the Treasurer to deliver that backtrack and that backflip on the first day of the Prime Minister's leave for a holiday. The Prime Minister then went to the US, and he is now at ASEAN, not in the country to face questions in question time about that huge backflip.

What does that say about this Treasurer? He's been rolled again by this Prime Minister, just as he was rolled at the productivity roundtable, which the Treasurer wanted to turn into an economic reform roundtable. He got pulled back into line, and it became a productivity roundtable, with one outcome: suspension of changes to the National Construction Code, which was coalition policy at the last election. So there was a three-day talkfest for the government to rebadge a coalition policy.

We argued at the time that, when it came to the super changes, indexation is a must and you should not tax unrealised capital gains. It is a fundamental accounting principle that can't be breached. The Treasurer—and those opposite—defended to the hilt the importance of the changes, but then he had to change when his boss pulled him into line.

This change by this government is going to leave a significant black hole in the budget, a budget that, by the Treasurer's own admission, is having 10 years of deficits. There are deficits as far as the eye can see! So how is this treasurer and this prime minister going to pay for this black hole? Is it higher taxes? Is it cutting services? Or is it bigger deficits? They are the three options for this treasurer and this prime minister, and they've refused to answer those questions.

If it's higher deficits, we need to understand that debt is not free. The debt we take on today will be repaid by our children and our grandchildren. Today, as it stands, as I speak, there is $50,000 a minute in interest repayments under this government. What it shows us is that Australians are paying the price.

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