Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

One can now start wondering just how often we will find ourselves in this House discussing Labor’s broken promises. This government has been in office for just over 18 months, roughly. One can always remember the election campaign: ‘I’m a fiscal conservative.’ Well, the fiscal conservative has admitted in this House that Australians can anticipate being $315 billion, I think it is, in accumulated debt in about six years time. The Prime Minister has blamed that on everybody, as has the Treasurer. I am just waiting for them to blame the Mongolians—it will be only a matter of time before they are dragged into it.

Questions are asked about the impact of something like $9,000 debt for each Australian and the ongoing interest charge. In our early years of government, just finding the $8,000 million to pay interest on a $96 billion debt was difficult. I can only do the simple arithmetic and multiply that by three and a bit and I come up with around $20 billion in interest. Compare that, if you choose, with the cost of running the health system.

The member for Page accused the Howard government of ripping $1 billion out of the health system. The school teachers union always accused the Howard government of not giving as much to public schools as to private schools. But in each case, there is a total and deliberate failure to talk about general purpose revenue. Fifty per cent, give or take one or two per cent either side, of all the expenditures of state governments are funded through this parliament. The member for Page does not give a damn about it inasmuch as she thinks this parliament should organise taxes galore and not worry where they go. You can count numbers at any time. You have no right to stand up at this stage. You do not care, because you do not worry what people pay in taxes to this place.

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