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

Mr Deputy President, you and I are both students of history. In just six short years, Labor conjured up a projected debt of two-thirds of $1 trillion and just 6½ years ago the coalition had about $40 billion in the bank. If anyone had said 6½ years ago that even the Labor Party could conjure nearly $700,000 million in projected debt, no-one in this country would have believed that.

Yet that is what they have done. They have created the problem and, when we try to solve it and come up with some solutions, they complain. No-one believes this budget is comfortable. I accept that there is pain in the community. There are no easy choices in this budget. It is difficult. We are not doing this because we enjoy it, we are not doing it because it is easy; we are doing it because we have to do it.

Let us face it: this budget is electorally hazardous. Every political instinct, every political impulse, every opinion poll would tell you: don't do it. Every opinion poll would say: 'Take the easy option and do what the Labor Party and the Greens always do; just chuck it on the credit card, because the voters of today won't feel the pain, neither will the politicians.' That is the easy way out. It is typical of the Left here in Australia and throughout the developed world to throw the debt and the responsibility to the next generation, who cannot yet vote.

That is the easy way out, the cowardly way out. While of course we know and understand that the Labor Party and the Greens know nothing about economics, we always thought they had a social conscience—that they may have no idea about economics, but they have some sort of social conscience. Now we know this: that they are quite happy to throw the debt on to our children and grandchildren and those yet unborn for the sake of their own electoral hides. It is absolutely disgraceful. If the history of the Western world has said anything in the last 30 years it is that governments must say no, enough is enough and that generations must live within their means.

The history of Western Europe is littered with this lot, every single interest group—all the rent seekers, all the cronies—seeking money from the government. And they always give in. Do you know why? Because it is the easy thing to do: 'Put it on the credit card, we will get re-elected. Forget about tomorrow, forget about our children and our grandchildren.' That makes me sick.

I get this hypocrisy every day and I bet you I will get it for the next several months: 'You're cutting this, you're cutting that.' We are doing it for one very simple reason: so that our children and our grandchildren and those yet to be born will not have to face a mountain of debt. If you want proof of this, you have only to look across at Western Europe. Quite frankly, if I were a Greek teenager I would want to shoot every politician and half the electorate because the government have spent their inheritance.

You owe me an apology, Mr Deputy President. I look forward to the budget in reply on Thursday. Can you imagine Mr Shorten delivering a credible return to surplus? When they were in government Labor kept talking about a return to surplus. It was just a chimera, it was a fraud and it was a joke, just like all their Social Democratic partners in Western Europe. The problem with Social Democrats is that they have no credibility on this issue. Labor have always left Australia further in debt for the last 113 years and they have still not come up with a way to pay off debt. They sit here and whinge and carp about what we are doing. We are doing it for one simple reason: to ensure that our kids and grandchildren have a future.