Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to make a little announcement to the House. My good friend the member for Herbert in his excellent speech tonight mentioned that it was the member for Moncrieff's birthday. I would like to correct the record and say that it is the member for Moncrieff's birthday on Thursday. I know all of us here tonight in the chamber wish the member for Moncrieff a very happy birthday for Thursday.

Honourable members: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you—

We have even got a bit of singing going on. This might be the first time we have had Happy Birthday sung in the House. I am sure there will be many more happy returns for the member for Moncrieff as well.

The temporary budget repair levy bills are before us. This is a very important matter. It goes to our children and our grandchildren. It goes to whether our generation should burden future generations with the bill for propping up our own current standard of living. There are reasonable debt levels, serviceable debt levels, which means that a government can borrow but can also plan for the future. There comes a time when the government has to look the Australian people in the eye and say: 'The situation has got out of control. The opportunity cost of that debt is starting to hurt future generations and we must act.' That is the situation that confronts us as a government at the moment. When the interest bill on your debt reaches $1 billion a month and is going to continue to grow unless something is done then it is time for a government to act.

The one thing this government said more than anything else during the last three years it is that we would act to stop the reckless spending and to get the budget back under control. That is the task we set upon doing when the Treasurer gave his excellent, considered and honest budget speech on Tuesday before last. It was honest. We could have taken the easy option and tried to skim over the problems facing this nation, but we decided to open the books transparently and show the Australian people the current state of affairs. It did mean being honest about what had been promised in the future years beyond the forward estimates by the previous government completely unfunded. It did require us to say that we are going to have to make some tough decisions, that we are going to have to introduce some important reforms that will enable the taxpayer to get value for money in various sectors and that we are going to put in place some important price signals to ensure that the growth in expenditure will be sensible, contained and in a way that we know our revenue base can support. And that is what the budget set about doing.

I take a moment to commend the leadership that we saw from the Treasurer and from the Prime Minister, for their courage to say to the Australian people that the time has come. We have said this before on this side: none of us here wants to stand up and say that we have had to put in place tough measures. We would much prefer to have continued on from 2007 where we had a budget in surplus, where we had the Future Fund set up, where we had a higher ed fund set up and where we had a telecommunications fund set up. We would have loved to continue down that path of responsibly managing the economy, building funds up and ensuring that surpluses continued. But that is not what we faced when we won the last election; we faced something completely different. The member for Herbert demonstrated this when he referred to the charts that we faced. One of those was the government debt, gross debt, that we were facing: with no policy change by 2023-24, we were looking at $667 billion. That is not a monopoly money; that is money that is a debt, that has to be repaid and that has to be serviced. And it has to be repaid by the taxpayer. That is what we faced.

If you look at the rest of the major economies that we are normally compared with, you see our spending had got out of control and the situation with regard to the changing net debt between 2012 and 2018 as a percentage of GDP had also got out of control. We were going to hit eight per cent. I do not know, but I think you would have to go back to just after the Second World War to find a government facing a similar situation. We had to act. In terms of the government spending increase between 2012 and 2018, we were looking at 16 per cent, and that is in real terms. The comparisons are: Denmark, minus one per cent; Netherlands, one per cent; Belgium, two per cent; Japan, three per cent; France, three per cent; Czech Republic, four per cent; Germany, five per cent; Austria, five per cent; Iceland, six per cent; New Zealand, seven per cent; Finland, eight per cent. I just repeat the figure for Australia: 16 per cent.

And once again, as the member for Herbert outlined, you also have to look at our record. The proud record of what coalition governments do when they get into government—that is, they sort the nation's finances out. As the previous Howard-Costello government demonstrated, year upon year upon year, you get the nation's finances sorted out and you slowly build towards surplus after surplus, growing, and then you get funds in reserve for the rainy day. That is what we have set out to do in this current budget: making sure we can get the budget back into surplus. Then we can put the funds aside for the rainy day.

Now, how have we done it? We have done it maturely, we have done it sensibly and we have done it with an eye to producing very good policy for the nation's future. Let us have a look at some of the welfare reforms. What we are talking about with the 'earn and learn' philosophy when it comes to welfare reform is that we are now saying to people that you have a responsibility to contribute. And it might only be that you have to contribute in a small way, but contribute you will if you can. This is an underlying philosophy of this budget, and it is a good philosophy, because as a nation we all have to lift. We all have to lift to repair the budget; we all have to lift to repair the nation's finances. Through our welfare reforms, that is the message that we have said. But we have sent that message with a responsible safety net to ensure that those who need looking after, those who need the protection, will get it. But for everyone else, what we are saying is this: it is your time to help as well. I am sure that will be a message that resonates within the community and that people will embrace, especially our young. My view is they do want to be part of the solution, they want to part of the nation's future, they want to be contributors, and we have given them the mechanisms to ensure that they do that through either earning or learning.

When it comes to the higher education reforms, these are the most significant reforms that we have seen in the higher education space since the Whitlam government—without question. What we have said to universities is that once again it is up to them to decide how they are going to run their universities. We said, 'You can put a price mechanism in your degrees, you can put a price mechanism in what you are offering to students and you can compete with each other and you can compete in a way which is free and open for you to make the decisions that you require'. I think that is incredibly important, especially with what it potentially holds out for regional and rural universities, those campuses based in regional and rural areas. They can say to students, 'We can offer you a competitive price on a world-class course and also, when it comes to the cost of living, we can offer you a advantages there as well'. We can start attracting students into our rural and regional areas. These are substantial reforms.

And it is the same with what we have done in the health space. It is worth reminding people that the reforms we have undertaken in the health space are also important. There are also safety nets, but the reforms are also done in the context that the health budget continues to grow for the next four years. We have put a small but important price signal in there for the health consumer. This is, once again, important reform. It is not the first time that it has been tried when it comes to Medicare. Obviously, the Hawke government did the same thing. But it is also not the first time that it has been tried within the health system, because it has been tried when it comes to our pharmaceuticals. This is very important reform. By putting that price signal into Medicare we are saying to people. 'There is a tiny cost to providing Medicare and if we are to make sure that Medicare is sustainable you need to understand that it does come at a cost to the taxpayer.'

So these are important reforms which have driven what we have done in this budget. Overall the focus has been on ensuring that we get the budget back to surplus, and back to surplus we will get it. It will then be within our ability to start repaying Labor's debt. We have already reduced the forecast debt—we have almost halved it—but then we will actually be able to get on to the job of starting to repay it. But, importantly, we have also introduced significant reforms which will stand the country in excellent stead in the future. It will mean that we will have a world-class education system. It will mean that we will have an affordable and sustainable health system. It means that we will have a welfare system which looks after those most in need but encourages those who can to use welfare as a temporary thing and make sure that they get on with their lives and contribute. That is extremely important, because it is saying to people, 'You have the ability to be as much a part of our society as everyone else.' That philosophy that underpinned the budget will ensure that we can grow the economic pie of this nation and by growing the economic pie we will grow jobs, we will grow communities, and we will grow this country into being the world leader that it should be.

The amendments to what we are trying to do here are nothing but a distraction. What this government is intent on doing is fixing the nation's finances—starting the budget repair job. Start it we have and finish it we will, because this is too important for us not to do so. Our children depend on the decisions we are taking currently; our grandchildren depend on the decisions that we are taking currently. We must do this for future generations. Otherwise, we are leaving them with the tab for our standard of living today, and that is not fair.

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