David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Hansard source

'Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.' The Australian government cannot change global warming. We emit two per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Policy in China, the US, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Iran, South Africa, South Korea, Japan and Brazil is not driven by what we do here. We should have the courage to abandon our job-destroying, poverty-inducing Paris commitment, and we should have the serenity to only actively seek to reduce emissions when they do.

What the Australian government can do, can change, is the debt that it leaves to the next generation. For the sake of our children and our children's children, we should muster the courage to arrest the growing debt and then start repaying it by delivering budget surpluses. What got us into this mess is short-term spending on handouts to people who do not need it and excess public-sector wages. We have been borrowing to spend rather than to invest. We have been doing it for a decade and it is set to continue. We need the wisdom to reject the madness of rebadging the Renewable Energy Target as a clean energy target while pretending that it is not a carbon tax. We need the wisdom to restrict government spending to the needy and to cut Public Service wages so that we deliver budget surpluses, pay back debt and leave our children with a better standard of living than we have enjoyed.