Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Goodness me! That's going to take me a moment to recover. In any event, what are we talking about? We are rising to talk about all things to do with the budget, apart from anything else, and that was a nice interlude. I was taken earlier on, and I think Senator Collins referred to it—it would take a special type of hubris in this place to walk back from a statement as far as this Prime Minister has. It's worth reading out again, because an extraordinary statement was made this time last year by this Prime Minister. Did I say 'president'? Prime Minister, I meant. He acts like the President. He said, 'The only tax policy that we are implementing is the one we took to the election.'

When you think about it, the question is whether you believed that when you were saying it or whether it's more of the talking points you read out loud. We know that—it's very clear now, even though we're told that we haven't seen the budget yet. Yes, we have. We've seen bits of it. There it is. There are bits of it there. The font is excellent, by the way—whoever has done that. It's almost like a stigmatism.

This is actually more than simply just what is looming to be a disgracefully irresponsible budget. I think we are on the cusp now of a generational shift in this country. The political party on the other side of the chamber has now held the reins on this economy for four years. They spent the better part of the first three blaming us. In fact, even today in question time, Senator Ayres skilfully negotiated through the wires—he is very articulate—in a final way to somehow link it back to us three to four years later. But this Australian economy is cratering under this government, under its reckless spending, under the pretence of inflation, which is now predicted to reach something like seven per cent at the end of the year. I suspect that's probably under. If you went to the real inflation rate at the moment, it would be more like 10 per cent by the end of the year.

I was reminded of the words of an actually good prime minister. Margaret Thatcher once famously said:

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money.

We're living that tonight. We're going to see it. We're going to see it play out in real time. Tonight this government is no longer spending money it doesn't have; it's coming after yours. It's going to come after yours and that of your children.

This economy is not sinking anymore; it's in total freefall. You can see it through every aspect of the economy. Construction costs are rising. Productivity has stalled. A 30-year-old now has seen something like 0.7 per cent productivity over the course of his or her working life. Unemployment forecasts are up. In fact, we have had zero productivity growth since this government came to power. It's trying to sell this as a fair budget, but fair to who? Who is this fair to? It's not fair to the next generation. Ultimately, this government tonight is going to spend money trying to take it from the next generation and then lumber them with an ever-increasing debt. By some measures of economic complexity, we're now ranking below Botswana and Zambia. We're an economy now almost entirely dependent on commodities—which we constantly are hearing demonised in this place—on housing and on basic conspicuous consumption. That's not an economy; it's a banana republic. That's where we're up to. This is going to do nothing to alleviate that. This government has allowed Australia to borrow, spend and import its way into a corner, and they have no plan to get us out of it. (Time expired)