Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm reports in today’s Financial Review that:

The fund is already $20 billion above target and more than three years ahead of schedule, according to Treasury estimates.

and that finance minister Senator Nick Minchin has effectively changed government policy on future surpluses, pledging only:

... this year’s surplus and next year’s surplus will be going into the Future Fund.”

When will your government stop its desperate attacks and focus on delivering the high-speed broadband network that all Australian businesses and consumers need?

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before calling the Prime Minister, I remind the member for Melbourne that he should not use the word ‘you’.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Melbourne for his question. Let me go through it, and I will start with broadband. I think everybody believes that we should have high-speed broadband in this country. The debate is not about whether we should have broadband; the debate is about how broadband should be provided and by whom, and what investments and assets are used to provide it. The point of departure between the government and the opposition is that we believe that broadband, where it can be provided by the private sector, should be provided by the private sector. We do not believe that taxpayers’ money should be used to subsidise the provision of something that in the normal market operations would be provided by the private sector.

We certainly do not believe that there should be investments of taxpayers’ money in something that would, in the normal way, be provided by the private sector. We certainly do not believe that the Future Fund should be raided in order to fund something that should be provided by the private sector. The Future Fund is a provision for our future, as its name implies. What it is designed to do is to assist in meeting the great demographic challenge that this country has through the ageing of her population.

No matter how much the member for Melbourne may plead with me, the Treasurer or the Minister for Finance to stop talking about it, we are going to continue to talk about it because we think that there is quite an important principle at stake. That principle is that if you are making provision for future generations you should not diminish that provision in order to satisfy today’s consumption. That is the principle that is involved. What is being proposed by the Australian Labor Party is precisely that. You either have a locked box comprising the Future Fund or you do not. I can assure the House that while ever the coalition remains responsible for these matters, the Future Fund will be used for the very purpose for which it was established.

So far as payments into the Future Fund and estimates of when particular targets will be reached are concerned, I am not confirming anything. I simply remind the member for Melbourne that when we established a Future Fund the complaint of his side of politics was that it had not been quarantined enough. And at the first temptation, the Labor Party gives in. As the Treasurer rightly said last Thursday, the first burglary is always the hardest. Once you have robbed the Future Fund once, you will do it again and again. The whole idea that this nation would have the discipline and the self-restraint to put aside some money for the liabilities of our children and grandchildren is a concept that I believe most Australians support and think makes a lot of sense.

We are living in very prosperous times at the moment. A lot of commentators are saying, ‘Why don’t we use that prosperity to build for tomorrow?’ One of the best ways of using that prosperity to build for tomorrow is to set aside today’s surpluses to meet tomorrow’s liabilities. That is what the Future Fund is about. We can do that and we can also have broadband. We should not have broadband at the expense of the future of our children. That is what the opposition is advocating, and that is why we are opposed. We are not opposed to broadband; we are as much in favour of broadband as the opposition. What we are opposed to is the methodology that they are employing. We are especially opposed to the idea that taxpayers should fund something that in the normal course would be provided by the private sector.