Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. This government is accruing debt at over $2 billion a week, and the majority of that money is being borrowed from overseas. Now is the time to ask questions about exactly what the Rudd government have done to make a bad situation even worse. Why did they take a position where they ran a campaign against inflation, at a time when exactly the opposite tack should have been taken? They should have been talking down the impact of inflation, maintaining growth in the Australian economy and becoming aware of exactly what the impacts would be on the Australian people of a looming financial crisis.

As the Prime Minister scurries out the door to run away from what is a significant debate about the state of the Australian economy, we say this: we are opposed to increasing debt beyond the capacity of the next generation. We are opposed to increasing taxes beyond the capacity of the next generation. We do not want to see our children without jobs; we want to see our children with jobs—real jobs, innovative jobs. We want to see our economy grow. We do not want to see a return to the bad old days of Labor—Labor with state banks. What a toxic cocktail: a Labor party member and a banker! What a cocktail that is! What an unholy relationship—a bit like Elizabeth Taylor going back to Richard Burton once again. That is what it is about: the Labor Party and bankers.

If there has been any lesson learnt over the last 30 years in Australia it is that governments should not be involved in banking. When the state government of New South Wales started peeling the gold-leaf ceiling off the corridors of the State Bank of New South Wales—put there by Nick Whitlam—the taxpayers of New South Wales said, ‘The only saving grace is the fact that we did not go down the path of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.’ Yet the Labor Party today are seeking to reintroduce legislation to once again burden the taxpayers of Australia with bad debts and bad projects involving property developers.

The government have a problem. The problem is that they have committed to a limit of two per cent real growth in budget expenditure; yet their own budget papers last year indicate that, in the major areas of expenditure—welfare, health, education and defence—committed expenditure is beyond two per cent over the forward estimates. Their commitment to a two per cent limit on an increase in expenditure does not take into account the fact that they are going to have to pay the interest on all the money they are borrowing today. It does not take into account the fact that the population is growing. It does not take into account the fact that, if we are going to build the infrastructure necessary to improve productivity in this nation over the next 10, 20 and 30 years, it will require investment.

But what the Rudd Labor government are leaving us with and leaving our children with is an impossible debt to repay. They are leaving our children with the highest taxes that a generation of Australians will ever face. And that does not even take into account the structural deficit that our nation is facing, as identified in the Intergenerational report. We are facing significant challenges in Australia—not just today, but tomorrow and beyond. Today the Rudd government are focused on politics. Today the Rudd government react to the latest initiative occurring overseas. We have heard Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, lecture the world on a whole range of things over the last 15 months. He told the world that it was warming. The world really listened to that! He told the world that nuclear nonproliferation should be the main game. He told the world that he had a solution to the global financial crisis. And do you know what? He is going to go to Copenhagen and he will have nothing. He cannot even deliver a five per cent ETS to show off to the rest of the world. He is going to be embarrassed. But the people who will pay the price for all of the Rudd government embarrassments are the next generation of Australians. We stand up for the children of Australia. The Rudd government deny them a future.

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