Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will be nice. What we have come to see in the last year is a number of great achievements. The carbon tax has been taken away; it is gone. Hence, Australian families are $550 a year better off. We have even had lower public transport fares and the lower cost of utilities—it is endless like that. From a Western Australian perspective, the mining tax has gone. And we are doing what we can to help out that sector as well. There is stopping the boats. This is an $11 billion saving as a result of having a border control system, a humanitarian intake that now depends on need, not on how much cash you have got—a compassionate approach at last.

In amongst all of that, we have made great steps forward with the free trade agreement with Japan and the free trade agreement with China. This is helping to build the economy and helping to concentrate on what can be achieved in the future so that we can go to our schools and talk about what great benefits are coming in the future. I think these are really good things. There are a lot of positive things to be said. There is the red and green tape reduction. There is over $2 billion at least a year in savings as a result of what this government has done. So there are lots of good stories to be told.

I guess one of the things that we still must approach is the fact that we have been left with a budget problem; there is no doubt about it. We have got to manage the budget. We have got to have this country living within its means. We cannot just increase the debt. I hear a young child up there in the gallery, and I do worry about the debt levels that are going to be left to the children of this country. I think it is the responsibility of this government and this nation to make the adjustments that we need right now so that this country can live within its means, so that we are not just shifting the debt to future generations. Children being born today will effectively have $25,000 or more in debt allocated to them, because what has happened in the past has to be fixed. I worry about the standard of living of people who are being born right now, unless we can get the budget under control. When I look across to the other side, I think the children of the future will remember who was responsible for that. In fact, I think in the future children will curse the day that Kevin Rudd was elected and then Julia Gillard, who followed him, and then Rudd again. They will curse the day that these people who could not manage an economy, who could not manage a budget, have shifted that debt to them. The people who will have to pay for the reckless spending in this country will rue the day that those opposite were elected, because they have to live with what that lot left them.

There are a lot of people in this parliament who are friends of groups. I believe that the friends of motoring are having a function and the friends of netball also have a function coming up soon. But there is also a group that is not bipartisan, and that is the friends of debt and deficit over there and they joined with their mates, the Greens—people who get in the way of responsible government and will not help this country and this government to make this country live within its means. They reach out to the Greens and they ask everyone, 'What's in it for you?' They reach out and try to get people to think only of themselves, and in that they are betraying the future generations of this country—the children of this country who will have to live with generations of problems, debt and a lower standard of living—because they will not help us get things back under control. It is an absolute disgrace, and they will be held accountable for it. The Australian people will remember who was responsible for this mess.

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