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

The member for Lingiari cannot come into the chamber professing to be concerned about Australian families and professing to be concerned about the people of the Northern Territory after the track record of the government of which he was a member left those people in so much debt and deficit that they will take 20 or 30 years to repay the debt.

When we take initiatives like this to stop Australia from staying on a trajectory where we have to borrow $1 billion every single month simply to pay back the interest on the debt that Labor accumulated, we do not expect the Australian Labor Party to stand in the way; we expect them to do the right thing. We know that the right thing is not always popular, but that does not in any way, shape or form erode the fact that it is the right thing to do for our nation. The coalition will continue to do the right thing for our nation. The coalition will continue to make sure that we put the interests of the next generation of Australians first. The next generation of Australians know that we will attempt to bequeath to them a country that is in a stronger financial position than what we inherited. That is not Labor's approach; it is not the approach of the Greens. On that basis, this is the right thing to do. I commend the bill to the House.

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