Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You will get your turn. You have probably already had it and you probably do not want to take it because you are so ashamed of the government you represent and you are so ashamed of the fact that there has been, yet again, another budget deficit.

Yet again the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have failed to set out a credible economic strategy for the coming 12 months, let alone for the next decade. And that is what we want: we want long-term plans, not just plans brought in in indecent haste, not just plans brought in at the dead of night and made out on a beer coaster. We want good, stable credible government.

This year the government has delivered a total gross debt to breach the $300 billion debt ceiling within the forward estimates. Another record deficit with at least two more to come. That is shameful. We are maxing out our nation's credit card and we are maxing out our nation's potential savings. We are preventing nation-building infrastructure from being able to be rolled out: roads, hospitals—those important things that the people, certainly in regional areas and certainly in the Riverina, need and expect. But they are not getting them from this mob.

How can the government justify $100 million spending on government advertising and yet deliver $25 billion more in higher taxes over the next four years? It is a good question. We must remember: these are taxes which will not hit Australians' pockets until after the next election. Let me tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that election cannot come soon enough.

Families have been let down yet again. They can justify spending to promote their own schemes—this is Labor—coincidentally in an election year, but scrap tax cuts, family payments and all the rest. Families are struggling to make ends meet. They are struggling in Moreton, they are struggling in the Riverina and they are struggling right throughout Australia. But what is this government doing about it? Very, very little. They are just taking out of their back pockets like a thief in the night.

Reading the reaction to the budget in The Daily Advertiser, my local newspaper in Wagga Wagga, on 15 May, the only positive reaction I could find was from—surprise, surprise!—the Country Labor president. The only positive reaction!

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Indeed! You might be interested to know—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Well, stay tuned on Adrian Piccoli and his comments about Gonski—stay tuned!

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