Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Gallagher) and the Minister for Trade and Tourism (Senator Farrell) to questions without notice asked today.

What we've heard in question time today is a good opportunity to reflect upon the economic management of the nation and the statements that were made in the last parliament about expenditure and where we go from here. There were questions about certain components of the government's commitments to spend taxpayer funds. Of course, in the last parliament people who have short- or even medium-term memory will recall that it was the then opposition that was wanting JobKeeper to be paid to foreign nationals, foreign students and foreign corporations, and had a range of other expenditure proposals around paying Australians to go and get vaccinations even though we were in fact pretty much the most vaccinated nation on earth.

I understand that people like to make these statements when they're in opposition; I'll try and restrain myself while I'm here! But certainly it is a matter of public record that the Labor Party wanted to spend too much money. There will be analysis done over this period of time. We have gone through a historically high period of public expenditure. As someone who values intergenerational equity I would say that we spent perhaps more money than we should have, but it was a very significant crisis; it was a very significant economic shock. The talking point you hear from the government that there's X number of Liberal debt, or whatever else they say, ignores the fact that every reasonable person expected that the government of the day would put its hand in its pocket to protect and preserve the economy in large part as we knew it, as we tried to address the significant health and economic shock. So, yes, there was money spent. There may have been some wasteful spending on the margins, but the now government is in a very weak position to lecture the Liberal Party and the National Party, now the opposition, on expenditure, given its attempted expenditure of funds on foreign students, foreign corporations and the like in the last parliament. I think we will long remember the idea that we should pay Australians, the most vaccinated people on earth, effectively, to go and get a shot.

That's on the expenditure side. What we need to do in this parliament and future parliaments is improve the budget position. I don't think it's a fair approach for future generations that we are going to have a significant level of debt that will make it harder for us to prepare for future shocks. One of the issues we have in this place is that we have too few young people in the parliament. I think if we had some more younger people in the parliament—I'm not casting aspersions here or saying anyone should try and solve this problem today—we would take a longer view on the build-up of debt that has occurred over the past decade. At 35 per cent of GDP, our debt to GDP, it is a historically high position for the country, and we need to find a way to get that down. If we go above 50 per cent it would be very difficult for us to deploy the same economic measures that were deployed in the last parliament—and I say that many of those measures were deployed with bipartisan support. It is a challenge for us to try and look at the findings of the Intergenerational report. We have a significant issue with the tax base, a pretty adverse dependency ratio, so we want to try to improve that over the long term.

The other thing that was said today that was important was in relation to the tax side of the budget. We also want to, over the medium term, have a good look at how we can improve the sustainability of the tax base. We of course are too reliant upon direct taxation. We should over the long run look at how we can have a more sustainable and a more competitive approach to taxation.