Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

My apologies, Chair. The former government were very lax in their approach to budgetary constraints. They always chose the political approach; they always chose the quick vote-buy over the tough decisions. This government is not going to shy away from the touch decisions, because being in government requires balancing the privilege that comes with it with the responsibility of making the hard decisions and taking the community with you. We were very, very clear as a government about our plans to get this budget back on track and to get our national economy moving forward post the mining boom, and that is going to require looking beneath the surface. It is going to require digging a little deeper under the budget figures instead of looking at what the boom is delivering and saying, 'Oh, it's okay.' I can tell you that right across regional Australia it is not okay. There are two job losses in this small business here, there are three over there—and that adds up to a community that is losing the capacity to stand up for itself, losing the capacity to pay its mortgage, losing the capacity to purchase goods from families down the road in a similar small business et cetera. Small business is feeling the pinch, and we are going to have to face up to the fact that it is not going to last forever and we need to look a little deeper. And that is exactly what the coalition government expect to do. We expect to reduce the debt and the deficit we have been left with, and that is going to take years. That is going to take years but we are prepared to do the hard yards.

In terms of education spending, wasn't it a classic that we set up a demand-driven system in higher education and said, 'We'll pay for it. No worries; bring it on.' I just noticed Senator Mason is entering the chamber. I hope Senator Mason is going to say something on this, because we are not quite sure how sustainable that particular policy setting was as a measure to build a budget on. That is because the former government took a siloed approach to their policy announcements, or should I say a thought bubbles/media release/vote-buying exercise. We are going to take a holistic view, because, hey guys, it is interconnected and you cannot make a decision in this part of the economy without it flowing through. So yes we want more young people in Australia to attain higher education. Yes we want a smarter citizenry that is able to take on all the challenges that the 21st century is going to bring our nation and all the opportunities to maximise that space

But that is actually not a good reason to say that anyone who wants to go to university should go to university and we will all pay for it, when you also combine that with all the other promises that were made and, at the end of the day, it becomes an unsustainable mess—and that is exactly what we have inherited as a government.

The Australian people made it very, very clear a few months ago where they wanted this nation to head and who they wanted to be in charge of the Treasury benches, and that was Mr Hockey and Senator Sinodinos; it was the Abbott-Truss government. They needed us in the room because they know that we are prepared to do what is in the national interest, not what is in our own political interest, and I look forward to watching that occur.

I just want to make some closing remarks on Labor and efficiency. After wasting billions of taxpayers' funds, Labor half woke up to the need for efficiency as the budget plummeted deeper and deeper into the red. And—instead of using a mechanism like the Commission of Audit to have a look and ask, 'Where we can get rid of waste, and how can we be more efficient without diminishing crucial services?'—they thought they would go for the central planning modus operandi: the efficiency dividend right across the board. That actually did result in services being cut, and in $2.3 billion being cut from education, from Australian universities, in a very blunt, Soviet style. So I would much prefer the Commission of Audit.