Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You are stealing my thunder! Lo and behold, today the shadow Treasurer stood up and opened up the MPI with the words—I kid you not; you could not make this up—'once upon a time'.

The member for Hinkler and I have just been chatting. I know that in question time the member for Wentworth, who is sitting at the table, loves to use a song reference or a literary reference or a movie reference. We were just conferring about whether or not this was a Paul Hogan moment in parliament. 'That's not a knife; this is a knife.' This is not an ambush. This is not a new tax. The carbon tax—that was a new tax. The mining tax—that was a new tax. Fuel tax has been around since Federation. Its structure has changed with time. When you look back at the issue we are confronting now, you see that it was indeed Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke who finalised indexation in 1983. Why? It was because he acknowledged that, Australia being a vast country, fuel taxes needed to be spent on roads and they needed to maintain pace in real terms. That is the key here. This is not an increase. It is maintaining real terms. That is the highlight.

There is also a precedent with the mechanism we are using—that being alcopops, of course. As a publican at the time, I did have some sensible and mature debates with customers in trying to sell that puppy. What you cannot walk away from and what the Labor Party failed to get is that the situation we confront as a nation is dire. And it happened on their watch. Every time you raise this, you get the GFC thrown at you. By the end of this financial year we will have $226 billion in net government debt. Tranche 1 of the GFC was $10.4 billion and tranche 2 was $47 million. That is $57.4 billion of $226.4 billion that is directly accountable. And it is non-recurrent expenditure. It was needed at the time, but it does not keep appearing in the forward estimates. The problem we have is a structural budget deficit, not the GFC. That is why we are doing what we are doing. It is still the problem, whether those opposite want to bury their heads in the sand today the same as they did in the last six years.

Last week's fertility rates were scary. The ABS announced a birth rate of 1.88. For those of you mathematically inclined, we need a birth rate in women under 49 of 2.1 to replace ourselves. We are growing the wrong way—we are growing by ageing. There are two categories that give us big trouble—and this happened in six years and unless we do something about it now it will continue to happen and get worse. In 2007, health—actual figures, not budget estimates—was $43 billion. At 2013 actual, it was $64.5 billion. That is a 50 per cent increase in six years under the watch of those opposite. In 2007, welfare was $96.5 billion. In 2013 it was $140.6 billion. That is a 46 per cent increase on their watch. The real problem we have—and this is why fertility is important—is that we have 23.5 million people today and 11.6 million in work. We have 11.6 million people carrying 12 million people. The rate of growth of those in the population aged 65 plus is twice the rate of growth of those in the 15 to 64 bracket. It is going to get worse. When those opposite were in government they missed it and tried to continue to blame—and do today—the GFC. They want to spend $80 billion more than us in the next 10 years on health and education. They want to spend $16 billion more than us in the next 10 years on foreign aid. They want to spend, if you will believe what we are debating today—unless they come to their senses—$19 billion more on roads and not have it funded by this measure. That is a total of $115 billion more that they want to spend. They still have their heads in the sand. The obvious question is: when will you stop playing populist politics, acknowledge there is a problem and either work with us to fix it or come up with some suggestions on how you might fund the extravagant lifestyle you plan to continue post the six years you have just had?

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