Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Generations should pay for themselves—I will just mention this for Senator Farrell's benefit based on his interjection—with the exception, of course, of infrastructure. But, as I have asserted, that is not where Labor's debt came from. It certainly did not come from infrastructure; it came from recurrent expenditure. And that was the great moral failure—forget the economic failings of the Labor Party when they were in government; forget them as they were awful—of the Labor Party. It is the moral failing that people do not talk about sufficiently. Somehow it is all okay to plug our children and our grandchildren with the debt of people living the high life on health, education and welfare. That generation cannot afford it.

I know my friend Senator Cameron always rails against cuts, as Mr Rudd did in the last campaign. 'Oh, the coalition is going to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.' Why? Balancing budgets and generations paying their way are what we in the coalition believe in. In a sense the demographic incentives are all wrong. It is so easy to add to public debt, like the Australian Labor Party does. Just put it on the credit card and, you know, no-one really feels the pain. There might be an adverse op ed in the Australian Financial Review or The Australian, but basically no-one really cares. Just add to public debt, like they did in Western Europe, like they did in the United States and Canada, and no-one ever really complains.

The tough decision is for a government to say, 'Generations should live within their means, and we have to cut to make sure they do.' That is a much tougher decision. If anyone thinks the coalition government enjoy cutting, they are wrong: (1) it is painful for people and (2) it is politically courageous. It is not easy to do; it is hard. We are doing it not because it is easy; we are doing it because we want to set up our country and our children and our grandchildren for a brighter future. Quite frankly, if I were a teenager living in Athens, Greece, then I would want to shoot every baby boomer and every politician I found. You have had governments for 30 years letting down their children and their grandchildren, and it is a disgrace! And somehow it is all okay to keep borrowing. Finally the day comes when the music stops and someone has to pay the bill—the IMF steps in or Chancellor Merkel says, 'Enough is enough,' and they have to pay the bill. We in this country want to stop that sort of expenditure before it gets to that stage. Sadly, it is only the coalition who will do that. We are the only ones who will stand up and speak for the next generation. The opposition will not do it. Do you know why? Because it is tough and it is politically difficult. Everyone knows that. It is fine for Mr Rudd and Senator Cameron, as he often does, to talk about cutting. Sure it is tough, but these are decisions, tough as they are, that we make for the future of the country.

You could defend the $660 million that the Labor Party spent in three years if it actually worked, but it did not. All that money was spent—$660 million—and it did not work. It did not save a job; those manufacturers went out of business. Or maybe you could argue they did not spend enough? If, horror of all horrors—horror perhaps more for the Labor Party than for the coalition—Mr Rudd had been re-elected, and God forbid the horror of that, would Senator Carr stand up and say, 'We're going to give another $1 billion or another $2 billion to the car industry'? Would that be appropriate? It might prop them up for a bit longer, but in the end it would not save the industry. And that is the sad thing.

I accept part of Senator Cameron's argument: it is not just about the union movement—and I have not said that—it is also about a high Australian dollar, the high cost of manufacturing, low economies of scale and increased competition in the market. I accept that, and I am not going to argue that it is all the fault of the trade union movement or, indeed, of Australian workers—I do not accept that; there are many other issues as well—but the Labor Party fundamentally failed, and that is what is so frustrating.

What gets me is this. When I was at university the Hawke government were elected—and I do not mind saying this and I have said it before—and they were a great reforming government. The current government is not a reforming government in that model, in that Hawke and Keating—