David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to hear that the member for Kingsford-Smith purports to understand the need for a sustainable budget because I want to talk about that tonight and about how important it is for the people of my electorate. The budget marks the end of an era—an era of irresponsibility. It is a clear contrast between a previous government that always spent like it was someone else's money and a government that treats every dollar of taxpayers' money with respect. There is a clear contrast here. I do not believe that members opposite fundamentally understand how important this is. I do not believe that members opposite are truly committed to running a sustainable budget and truly believe that that is a critical issue for the future of the nation. When you believe that, it influences the way you behave as government and it means that you are cautious about how you spend. It means you do not do things like blow $11 billion on failed border protection policies. It also means that you do not go from having $45 billion in the bank to a couple of hundred billion dollars of debt within just five or six years. I have a sneaking suspicion that members opposite just see numbers on a page and a bunch of graphs, but in their gut they do not believe that budget sustainability is important.

If you go through Labor's recent history in government, you have to go right back to 1989 to find a time when they ran a budget surplus. If it had been one year of deficit you might say that it was a particularly difficult year; if it had been two years, it could have been unfortunate; but 12 or 13 years is just a way of life—it is a structural way of life and a structural way of thinking by those opposite. It is a way of thinking that does not address the structural issues in the budget. It is not easy to address those issues. The government is very conscious of the impact that addressing those structural issues has, but you cannot pretend that those structural issues do not exist if you want to be a serious government governing in the interests of the people of the nation. One approach fritters away money, you never see a spending program that you do not like and you just think of more creative uses of bureaucracy, and the other approach uses government funding in a sensible way to build assets that deliver for the economy over time. It is about investment as opposed to frittering money away. It is about funding infrastructure such as the WestConnex, a fantastic project for the people of my electorate in Banks which will save more than 20 minutes on the trip to the city from Beverly Hills—a huge benefit to productivity in our economy and to family life in my electorate, allowing people to get to and from work quicker. The medical research fund announced last night will be a historic fund. Again, it is a tremendous example of the difference between sending $900 cheques off to people, who may or may not be in the country, and using government resources to build for the future.

We are at our best as a nation when we confront the problems we face. The Howard government did it, to its credit, the Hawke and Keating governments did it on occasion, but the Rudd-Gillard governments never did it—sometimes they just avoided the problem; often they actively made it worse. In my electorate, people are very cautious about how they spend their money. They value the work that they do. They do not simply throw money around like drunken sailors, because if you do that, as a family or as a small business, you get into trouble. So do governments. That is why it is so important for the people in my electorate of Banks and for all the people of Australia that we, as a government, behave in a grown-up fashion and manage the budget like adults. That is precisely what we are doing and the people of Australia deserve no less.

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