Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. You are right to pull me up on that.

The other interesting argument we hear from those opposite is that they have actually had nothing to do with the deficit and it has just been caused by global economic circumstances and reduced taxation revenue. A small fact that they should bear in mind is that the reduction in taxation revenue has only been $9 billion out of a $22 billion surplus. The reason we are in deficit is that there has been $28 billion of extra spending. So it is not actually the global financial crisis that has caused the deficit; it has been decisions of the government. We would argue that it has been ill-thought through decisions of the government. That is what we are saying in this place today.

Ours is not a popular decision; we accept that. We will take a hit in the polls, and those on the other side will jump around with glee. But it is the right decision for our future. It is a principled decision. It is not a decision to run some ads leading up to an election of me standing in front of some big towers claiming I am an economic conservative and talking about how I have always been an economic conservative who believes in a surplus budget. This is showing through action a commitment to real economic conservatism, which is keeping this country in a situation where we will be able to pay back any debt that we rack up in the future. Giving the green light to the Labor Party and the government to rack up $200 billion of debt on the national credit card is the wrong thing to do.

In summing up, I just want to deal with one other issue that those on the other side raise, which is the rewriting of history. I do give the Labor Party great credit for that; they are very good at it, particularly on the history of stimulus packages. If you look at the history of stimulus packages, you will see it is not great. We remember Working Nation, of course, and the one in December does not look to have gone so well. Even going back to FDR’s policy, which is often rolled out as the great left-wing policy program of the 20th century, it did not work. What is forgotten is that FDR’s package did not work. There was 17 per cent unemployment in 1940. He would have lost the next presidential election but for the war. I respect what he did during the Second World War—do not get me wrong—but I think his economic credentials are far from what those on the other side would like them to be.

We agree on this side of the House that we need some stimulus. That is why our position is that we support extra money for the Investing in Our Schools Program. We support some investment in productive capacity in the economy for health issues, electricity networks and so forth. But what we will not do is allow this government to rack up $200 billion of debt for our country’s kids to face in the future. It is the wrong thing for this parliament to agree to. We will stand in the way. It is not the popular thing to do; the member for Boothby will agree with me. Those on this side of the House will agree that it will be a difficult thing for us to do in our electorates, but it is the right thing us to do. I stand opposed to these measures.

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