Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

While Bob is a hard act to follow, I will do my best. In my maiden speech to this House I said, 'The easiest thing in life is to sit on the sidelines and complain. It is much harder to stand up for what you believe in.' While I am sure that many of the class of 2010 would feel that the 43rd Australian Parliament was a baptism of fire, I am proud of what we achieved in the most challenging of circumstances. I am proud of our defence and advocacy of the ideals we hold dear in the pursuit of better government, in the pursuit of government that recognises there is no limit to what Australia can achieve, but only if we respect the limits of government as well as its potential.

I said in this place three years ago, 'Longman is an area not defined, in my mind, by its geographical borders but by the character of its people. They are a hardworking people bound by a common aspirational mindset.' It is incumbent upon us to see government as an enabler. We must seek to unlock the potential of the Australian people. Government cannot always prescribe solutions, but it can help create a society empowered with the sense of its own destiny. Or, as a wise colleague once put it, the best governments will be those that understand and accept the limits of their power, not those that seek to dictate from on high how business should run, how society should be structured, which companies should stand or fall or how individuals should run their own lives.

With the new parliament and a new government comes a new hope. As Her Excellency the Governor-General has recounted, at the opening of the first parliament in Canberra, the Duke of York said that a new parliament marked a new page of history. He said that the opening of the Australian parliament was an opportunity for the rededication of this Commonwealth to the great ideals of liberty, fairness, justice and the cause of peace.

While we stand on the shoulders of giants, modern politics presents new challenges. Many have argued that the politics of today seeks to play to cheap opportunism, a short-term election cycle and an even shorter and more diverse media cycle. We must collectively overcome any retreat to such conditions. We must use the grand opportunity of the nation's parliament to rise above the white noise and replenish its corridors with the dreams of greatness.

As the Prime Minister once said in this chamber, so much of what happens here passes people by; sometimes it even annoys them. But, he said, the parliament must lift people's spirits, make them feel more proud of our country and more conscious of our potential to more often be our best selves. Indeed, in the face of the relentless pressure of modern politics and its threat to drag all of us to cynicism and opportunism, we must respond with the recognition that politics should ultimately be about doing not what is popular but what is right. We are driven by purpose, not the blind pursuit of power for power's sake.

This coalition government is determined to build a robust and prosperous economy founded on prudent economic management. It is only through a strong economy that we can realise a premium social dividend. This government will guarantee Australia's future prosperity by focusing on our national strengths. We will bolster the economy through lower taxes, less regulatory burden and higher productivity. The ultimate policy objective of Australian legislators should be to ensure that the next generation inherits a nation with more opportunities than their own.

While future generations will arguably continue to see Australia as the lucky country, one uniquely placed in the heart of a globalised world between the dominant West and a rising Asia, we will face a myriad of challenges, including that of an ageing population, which will inevitably place a greater burden on government drawing from a smaller tax base. The unstoppable march of this demographic reality will hit home in concert with a potentially significant debt burden and the waning of the mining boom.

In response, our first policy focus should be raising the productive capacity of the economy. If more people are in better jobs earning higher real wages, they pay more tax. So we must build a vibrant, deregulated economy which is part of a liberalised trade environment. I am proud to be part of a government with an ambitious deregulation agenda driven by a whole-of-government approach. I would like to take this opportunity to commend the Prime Minister, ably assisted by the member for Kooyong, for taking personal responsibility for deregulating the economy. Increasing our nation's productivity requires us to recognise that it is private enterprise, not the government, that creates wealth and prosperity and employs people.

As well, we need to raise workforce participation by boosting immigration and the birth rate. In areas where the market is not best placed to do it, the government must take the lead in productive investment. That is why the coalition has such a strong infrastructure agenda, it is why we as a government have spoken up about opening up the north of Australia and it is why we should talk more about the possibilities of a sovereign wealth fund.

While the previous generation saw a massive increase in productivity with women entering the workforce, future generations will not enjoy the same demographic advantage. Undoubtedly, women entering the workforce triggered the biggest productivity gain of the past 30 years. For this generation, there is no equivalent labour force stimulus that lies untapped. Generation Y and successive generations will grow up with the majority of women in their number already in the workforce. Instead, we will have to take advantage of new technology and expand into new markets. Future generations will require constant upskilling and further training and will need to be willing to turn themselves into a more creative workforce to achieve productivity gains similar to those of the predecessor generation. In the meantime, landmark policies such as the Abbott government's Paid Parental Leave scheme have been designed to maintain women in the workforce. So, effectively, the Paid Parental Leave scheme is a productivity-increasing measure. As an economic driver, it should be construed as a workforce entitlement, not a welfare payment.

Another area of policy focus should be encouraging Australians wherever possible to secure their own long-term financial security. That is why as a government we need to ensure superannuants are getting the best possible deal, along with certainty. Unlike the previous, Labor, regime, the coalition will not be shifting the goalposts on superannuation. We must also be thinking about ways to support the next generation of Australians to pay for their education and afford a home. We must be inventive with approaches that encourage the social and economic development of the next wave of Australians so that they can secure their own financial security. Wherever possible, this should be done by incentivising the development of individual asset bases rather than relying on income assistance.

The stark fact in terms of Australia's ageing population is that our generation will be paying to support the retirement of the previous one on an unprecedented scale. The percentage of the population aged 75 and over is expected to increase from 6.4 per cent to over 14.4 per cent. While the values, attitudes and choices of baby boomers and generation Y might seem worlds apart, both sides must tackle this issue for our mutual benefit. That is because what we are really looking at is a demographic superbubble. When the baby boomers leave the workforce, they will take away not only their skills but their tax-paying capacity. According to demographer Bernard Salt:

… while the preceding generation produced 2.5 million retirees, we now have 4 million Australians on the brink of retirement about to draw on age pensions, pharmaceutical benefits and other government assistance.

Our current immigration rate is insufficient to compensate for this demographic shift. The annual permanent migrant intake of about 100,000 in the 1990s has increased by merely 90,000—growth nowhere near strong enough to fill the breach caused by the massive ebb to retirement. We cannot put our heads in the sand and postpone the conversation for another 30 years. As Peter Harris, the Chairman of the Productivity Commission, said:

The best time to develop policies that address the inescapable implications of demographic change is while the transition is in its infancy. It is a good time to start a debate and to float creative policy options.

There are very good reasons for making a start now on this key area of public policy. As the Productivity Commission has highlighted, if the pension age is not recalibrated and no other solution is found, taxes will need to rise by 21 per cent to pay for the ageing of the population. In fact, by the turn of the century, Australia will count more 100-year-olds than babies.

While there is no silver bullet, I believe the debate should focus on some key areas. While I have already outlined productivity-increasing measures and securing our own financial security as key drivers of our collective response to these challenges, we must also ask ourselves: what can we reasonably expect taxpayers and the government to provide to individuals? With a smaller revenue base and a greater demand on Treasury, we will have to make difficult decisions about what we as citizens expect our governments to provide. We either accept that they will do less or we anticipate paying significantly higher taxes.

While we respect and value the generations that have preceded us, who have worked hard all their lives and paid their taxes, the conundrum is, as the Treasurer has put it, that there is a:

… battle between the fiscal reality of paying for what you spend, set against the expectation of majority public opinion that each generation will receive the same or increased support from the state than their forebears.

We must do everything we can to appropriately prepare for these challenges ahead. As Australians who are living longer, we will retire later. While those currently on the cusp of retirement may not be so impacted, I fully expect that, even if the pension age is not raised in the immediate future, it will have reached 70 by the time my generation reaches retirement. It will also be imperative to do everything in our power to prevent Australians who want to remain in the workforce from being prematurely shut out of economic participation in our society.

Finally, as we look at our toolkit in meeting the challenges facing our nation, we must look to the wider world. As one of the world's leading trading nations, Australia depends on open and transparent international markets for jobs and economic growth. Our unique place between the established West and an ascendant Asia means we must take hold of the opportunities that liberalising trade present.

The coalition will strengthen our trading relationships and boost the national economy by fast-tracking free trade agreements with China, Indonesia, Japan, India, South Korea, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to ensure that Australia fully capitalises on broad export and investment opportunities—and particularly Asia's rapid economic growth and the consumerism of its rising middle class. The coalition will place economic diplomacy among the bedrock of its international policy objectives. This government is establishing a new $100 million Colombo Plan that will give Australian university students an opportunity to study in our region, to deepen our engagement with our neighbours. The Australian government understands our unique position in the world and stands prepared to take hold of the opportunities of a more globalised and interconnected world in the 21st century.

We have often been referred to as the lucky country. I take a different approach, I believe we should be a country prepared to make our own luck, a country not afraid to stand tall and proud of its place in the world. While the challenges that face our nation are significant, the opportunity to meet those challenges is there for the taking. Our greatest asset is not our resources buried in the ground but the Australian people themselves. I see it every day in my own community—the hardworking Australians prepared to take a chance, not afraid of risk and just having a go. It is this intrinsic aspirational mindset that makes our community and our nation great. It is my determination in this place and as part of the Australian government to do all that we can to foster this approach to life.

The electors of Longman have placed in me an enormous amount of trust, and it is my commitment to this great local community that I will continue to work tenaciously in this place and in my community to repay that trust. Each day we will stand in defence of the principles and virtues that have made our society the envy of the world—the principles of freedom of choice, of equality of opportunity and of fair reward for hard work. In my maiden speech in this place I said:

When we make the decision to stand for parliament, we all have some idea of the sort of Australia we want to see. For me, it is a country of high productivity, a modern, enterprise economy where barriers to opportunity are minimised; where small business is valued as much as big business; where taxpayers’ money is valued …

Those words ring as true to me today as they did then. We will build a strong, diversified economy with lower taxes that will deliver more jobs, higher real incomes and better services for Australian families.

While we inherit the challenges of Labor's legacy—a legacy that left 200,000 more unemployed and gross debt projected to rise to $667 billion, or $29,000 for every man, woman and child—we will action the people's mandate to us to clean up Labor's mess. We will be a government that will scrap unnecessary taxes, cut wasteful spending and reduce the tax burden on businesses so that they can prosper and grow. We will be a government that understands that opportunity is always better than subsidy. We will be a government that understands that all Australians should have freedom of choice. And we will be a government that rewards hard work instead of penalising it.

As I said, we are a country that should not see itself as the lucky country but rather be prepared to make our own luck. While we stand on the shoulders of giants, let us use this parliament to reach a little further, to deliver to the next generation of Australians a country with greater opportunity and greater prosperity.

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