Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No—spending as a ratio of percentage to the GDP instead of tax. The point I want to draw your attention to is your spending—spending to GDP.

The Assistant Treasurer recently made a comment on Sky that running the budget was not that dissimilar to running a household budget. With the full record deficits, could you imagine buying an $800,000 home, not making a payment on it for the first four years and then going in in the fifth year and saying, 'Listen, I would really like to service some of my debt, and I've got $2.60 to give you,' because basically that is what it comes back to as a percentage when you start looking at the $1.5 billion potential surplus that may eventuate in the future—to start drawing down some of these record deficits that this government is continuing to bash us around the head with.

I cannot lose the opportunity of speaking about the increase in the debt ceiling from $250 billion to $300 billion. Today we were advised in the House that, 'We just need to have a buffer.' Well, did we need to have a buffer when we took it from $150 billion to $200 billion? Did we need to have a buffer when we took it from $200 billion to $250 billion? But guess what? They are saying they are not going to draw down on that. They just need it there as a buffer. When you go and have a look at the budget forecast, they have actually taken a provision for the interest to service that debt into the future. In 2015 they are making provisions for the interest on that debt, which they try and tell you that they are not going to draw down on. Who can you trust? When it comes to this government, when will they learn that you cannot tax and legislate a nation into prosperity?

In closing, I just want to make a quick comment on the AAA credit rating. When Standard and Poor's and Moody's give credit rating assumptions for nations around the world, they give us a thing called a comparative rating. Why is it that, when we were in government and had money in the bank, and no debt, and now here we have a nation with unprecedented debt and very little capacity to service, with structural deficit—

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