Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

If you listened to the Labor and Greens contributors to this debate, you would be scratching your head and wondering how on earth the world ever reached the stage that it has reached. If it were not for these grandiose schemes funded by taxpayers, there would be no innovation. We would still be living back in the dark ages. I wonder how the first aircraft became airborne, how the first ship or the first submarine sailed, or indeed how any of the advancements that have been made with respect to medical technology, computing, IT and communications were made. The government must have been at the epicentre of every single one of these innovations! If it were not for the government, how on earth would the private sector have ever innovated in any particular way? For goodness sake. I have got to say I am not surprised, because that lot over there have always been exceedingly generous with other people's money. There has never been a time when the Labor Party have said, 'No, we don't want to invest taxpayers' funds in that.' There has never been a deal that has been put to the Labor Party, or to the Greens, that they have not wanted to sign up to with taxpayers' money.

But the unfortunate thing about all of this debate is this. The Greens and the Labor Party wring their hands and stand over there with their faux concern about the next generation of Australians and they say, 'Why won't the Liberals and the Nationals do something to ensure the safety of the next generation of Australians?' If only they had 10 per cent of that concern for how the next generation of Australians are going to pay back all the debt that Labor and the Greens left. If only they had the smallest bit of concern for the fact that it will be our children that will be paying back Labor's debt for the next 20 years. If only they had the smallest bit of concern for the fact that, in five years, they managed to indebt the next generation of Australians for decades. Then maybe we on this side of the chamber would take them a little bit more seriously. Maybe they should have considered and recognised the fact that they have effectively put a ball and chain around the ankle of every Australian for the next 20 or 30 years, instead of just focusing on the fact that Australia does contribute about 1½ to two per cent of global CO2 emissions and saying, 'If only we had renewable energy and if only we had mass-scale investment then we could probably shave off about 0.001 per cent,' or 0.0012 per cent or 0.015 per cent or whatever the number is. For goodness sake; it is no wonder the Australian people woke up to the Australian Labor Party.

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