Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise on this motion put forward by the member for Newcastle, but I do have some issues with the wording of the motion. The member for Newcastle comes into this chamber and condemns the government for cutting the overseas aid budget. I am sure the member for Newcastle read the recent budget and has been following the debate in public over the last six years and that the member for Newcastle understands that this nation has currently run deficit budgets for the last six years and it will take at least three years until we can at least get that budget back into a balance. So that means that every year we are continuing to borrow more and more money. So if the member for Newcastle comes in and want to spend more money on foreign aid, a very noble cause, she should say where that money is coming from. Where is that money coming from? So you are going to raise taxes on other businesses? You are quite safe. We would like to hear where the money is coming from. Now we know where it came from for the last six years. We know where a lot of the foreign aid budget came from for the last six years: it was simply borrowed. So for the last six years we were actually borrowing money from overseas to give it back overseas. Even the former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr said you cannot run aid on borrowings. So if it is the proposal, which I seem to hear here from members on the other side, to raise company tax rates to pay more to fund their additional foreign investment—

Ms Claydon interjecting—

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