Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to endorse wholeheartedly these amendments. This is about accountability—and this side of the House is the side for accountability. Over there, the government are very good at claiming that they build things, with big signs out the front. They are very good at that but when it comes down to accountability and overseeing where the money has gone, explaining the break-up to the Australian people—a person’s $20,000 of personal tax or $40,000—the government are not quite so good about saying that some of it went to debt, and a lot of it is going to debt these days, or to the blow-outs on border control. They are happy to talk about photo opportunities at schools but not so happy about explaining how the debt comes into it.

The reality is that Australians do not like paying tax—I think we can be certain of that. They will be very unhappy to see where a lot of their taxes have gone. That is the reason the government have such a big problem with this. They are very unhappy about having to explain to the Australian people what this government has been about in the past three years—outrageous and reckless spending and huge taxation. That is what it is really all about. I do not need to look all the time over at that side because, as we get to the division on this matter, we are also going to be looking at this side, where the Independents sit. They are the ones who, after the last election, allegedly championed a reform with the government about accountability and transparency. So we will see what side the Independents are on. Do they care about accountability?

We already know that the government stands against accountability. It stands against the Australian people knowing where every tax dollar will go. It is not as though we are trying to break it down to the minutia against all programs and departments. I think the Australian people would be very interested in seeing how much the failures in border protection are costing them and how much the national debt is costing them as well.

The more things change here the more they stay the same. We had a lot of discussion about how this was going to be a brand new parliament, a new paradigm and how the sun would shine in. The sun is not shining in very far today and it is not reaching the government’s side of the chamber by any means. If we look at the debt levels that have been introduced by this government and compare those with the times when this country actually had a surplus, delivered by this team on this side of the House, there is a big difference. If we produce in the future a breakdown of where everyone’s taxes go, or if we applied what we are proposing now to what we had when this country had a surplus, up against debt that would be a zero. What a big difference it is now.

See this speech in context