Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) | Hansard source

Well, we're going to allow demand to meet housing supply. And, of course, we're going to have to keep that significantly lower than that figure over that period of time because we've got so much to catch up. I'm interested in the interjections from the member for Forde, and I'm wondering whether he's actually made any attempts to sell the budget within his electorate, because I know that there are so many wonderful small businesses in his neck of the woods who would be very devastated about that. I wonder whether the member for Forde is one of those Labor backbenchers who's taken the opportunity to turn off all his comments on every social media post because he's so tired of the backlash that he's been receiving. It's very interesting.

I've talked about the migration figures, but, unfortunately, the budget also reveals that the government's going to overshoot their migration target by 90,000 people. That's nearly the size of a federal electorate. It's probably bigger than a federal electorate in Tasmania. That's a significant number of people, and you add that on top of the 1.4 million that were brought in in the first term of this government. The government talks about a narrative here on intergenerational fairness. Where's the intergenerational fairness in that?

Can I point out that debt is heading to $1.25 trillion. The interest bill on that is $80,000 a minute. To put that in the context of a household, can you imagine what Australia could be purchasing right now and what we could be investing in if we were saving on that interest bill? When the government's spending so much money—it's such an absolute state in the budget with running up so much debt and so much poor investment over that period of time—is there any wonder why they're having to increase taxes? When they run out of taxpayers' money, they need to get more of it, and that's exactly what these bills are entirely about. It's not about intergenerational fairness. It's about trying to fill the coffers of the government—very disappointing—at the cost of small businesses at the cost of those who are trying to do the right thing through a testamentary trust to try to ensure that the next generation are looked after. These measures that are part of the budget are an absolute attack on aspiration, and the coalition will not be supporting them.

See this speech in context