Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You did. It just shows that this government and its members have no idea about the consequences of their decisions and their effects on the economy, which small business people do understand. The more debt you get into as a business means that you are taking away your ability to run that business because you have to focus on meeting your debt repayments instead of running your business. Just to make sure that the government know what debt is, because they do not seem to have any concern about debt, I googled ‘debt’ as a definition and have brought the response in here to tell the government so that they will know. The definition says:

• Something owed, such as money …
• An obligation or liability to pay …
• The condition of owing
• An offense requiring forgiveness or reparation …

Debt is an offence. The plain fact is that the Labor government have lost control of the nation’s finances. The easiest thing any government and any person can do is to spend other people’s money. This is money earned by hardworking Australians and hardworking families, by people who raised a sweat, people who wore hard hats for the correct reasons and not just a photo shoot. It is the people of Australia who have earned the money and paid the taxes. That money was not earned by the Labor government and they should not treat it as their own money. You have also spent the money they have not yet earned; you have mortgaged the futures of Australians, their children and their grandchildren.

Today during question time the Treasurer spoke about paying down debt. Let him come into this place and tell the people of Australia how much debt he has paid down. I would like to bet that while the government are running around and spending like a drunken sailor, which the Treasurer accused the Howard government of today, they have not paid off any debt at all. They are not even spending this debt wisely, and we need only look to the member for Fowler, who was quoted in the Canberra Times today in reference to the government’s budget. She said, ‘I have to ask the question of whether its programs are targeted as well as they could be.’

I always look to see what the electorate is saying, and I will read a letter printed today in the West Australian. The letter is from Sean Hefferon, from South Fremantle—traditionally a Labor area but now a Greens safe haven, recently wrested away from the Labor Party in a by-election in Western Australia. The letter is to the Treasurer and Kevin Rudd, and I will read it out in total. It starts off with, ‘Please explain,’ and it is not from Pauline Hanson, either:

The Rudd Government is keen to gamble with other people’s money. The Government wants us to believe that the record debt (that the Treasurer would not mention in the Budget) will be paid off over five or six years of annual GDP growth of 4.5 per cent. This is sheer optimism at best—a lie at worst.

We are an export nation, so which of the ailing international economies are going to provide us with this 4.5 per cent growth year in and year out? The mining boom that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan go on about, saying it delivered ‘rivers of gold’ to the previous government, delivered only an average of 3.25 per cent growth a year over 10 years. This was, as Mr told us ad nauseam in 2007, apparently a ‘once in a lifetime’ boom. Now we can expect an even bigger boom when the IMF and the RBA are predicting a protracted recovery? Kevin07? By the time the debt is paid off it may be Kevin27.

Now we hear that Messrs Rudd and Swan want to cut tax breaks on people’s superannuation funds—like a pair of Nambour safe crackers creeping through the night, oxy torch in hand. This reminds me of a scene in the first Harry Potter movie when the wand maker says words to the effect, ‘I wondered when I would be seeing you.’ Similarly I have to say, I wondered when they would start to raid super. If only all of this was fiction—like the movie.

But why are we surprised with these ‘casino economics’? Wasn’t it Mr Rudd who offered in 2007 the bizarre idea that WA future (post-mining boom) lies in investing Chinese savings in real estate in Latin America? Such an idea was a clear sign of things to come. And come they have with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, charged with overseeing the national broadband network, stating that the $43 billion project doesn’t require a cost-benefit analysis! This is contrary to common sense and this Government’s duty to the Australian people.

(Time expired)

See this speech in context