David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unsurprisingly, both Labor speakers so far in this debate have focused on measures that are contained in the budget which the ALP is critical of. In all cases, they have linked those measures that they are critical of to the decision of the government to provide company tax cuts. This is a line being commonly used by the ALP: they focus on some aspect of something that is in the budget that they do not like and they say: 'Well, why couldn't you have done this, given that you are giving the company tax breaks? There is spare cash for that, so why couldn't you have paid for something else?' They compare isolated measures. This is not a valid way to look at any budget.

I am sure Senator Gallagher in particular, as a past Chief Minister of the ACT, would be fully aware that, when you look at a budget, it is not a zero-sum game. Every budget is about hundreds if not thousands of decisions which collectively form a budget that is intended to deliver the outcomes that the government of the day is seeking to achieve. Some of those decisions will involve reductions in expenditure or the removal of programs that are no longer delivering in the ways they once did or were intended to do; in other cases, there will be new spending to try and deliver new outcomes. And that is because economies and societies are diverse and changing entities that require constant review and new approaches. The measures that are required to help stimulate economies and to ensure that societies are appropriately catered for by government are a changing mix as well, and also require constant review and constant consideration. In some cases, that will require you to spend more on certain aspects of society or of the economy; in others, to spend less in order to deliver balanced outcomes as a result of an overall budget.

Part of those considerations, and part of the decisions that people will make, is that no spending by government is possible without a tax base. To have such a tax base, you need to have economic activity. And to have economic activity, you need to have incentives for people and for businesses to take chances—to go out and risk their livelihoods, to make decisions, to try and get new businesses off the ground, and to grow existing businesses. Tax cuts were once universally accepted—and, until very recently, were accepted also by the opposition—as a proven method of creating an increased incentive for people to take such risks, to go out and make decisions which will help grow their businesses and, by doing so, grow the numbers of people they employ, grow jobs for the community and, inherently, grow wealth for the community. As I said, Labor used to agree with this; until recently—just a couple of years ago. But, whether it be politics and the political opportunity of taking a different line and opposing tax cuts for companies or whether it is because the unions have just told them that that is what they have to do, Labor have shifted their position. And today we are having this debate, where they are looking in a very isolated manner at tax cuts and they are trying to compare those with other, completely unrelated decisions that are made in the budget.

Senator McAllister made the same comments. That said, she only got to that right at the end of her contribution. Rather than playing the ball—by looking at the issues, looking at the facts, pulling apart the budget and having an examination of that—she spent the first half or three quarters of her speech in this place attacking the man, attacking the Prime Minister. Interestingly, right at the end of her comments, she used the phrase, 'it is not fair to future generations,' referring to the budget and talking about climate change and its lack of mention in the budget. Well, there are plenty of things that this government is doing about climate change. What is not fair to future generations is a failure to bring the budget back into surplus, and a failure to do that as quickly as we possibly can. It is clear in the budget that was delivered last night that we will be back in surplus in 2020-21, with an increased projected surplus over what was predicted last year. That is what we need to do to be fair to future generations. It is exceedingly unfair to saddle future generations with debt for expenditure on goods and services that we enjoy today. (Time expired)