Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

When you think the Labor Party can only go so low, they go lower. They have not got up to discuss the policy issues in relation to the Intergenerational report. They have attacked the report itself—the report produced independently by Treasury. No, they do not want to debate the ideas that we need to discuss as a government, as a country, in this report; they attack the independent people who write the report. It is a disgrace. This report, as it should, is talking about a word that a lot of other people will talk about at other times in relation to other things, and that is sustainability. That is all this report wants to discuss. It is laying down the scene of where we are at and where we are projected to go, and from that we need to have a discussion, as we should, and that discussion should be debated, but not the report itself. It is a disgrace that it has only just come out and, without even reading it properly, they are doing that.

When we talk about sustainability, what do we mean? We all want to, in every facet of our life, leave things in a better shape than we found them. Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, I know that you have a property. I have quite a modest property. I do weed control on it, I look after the creek, I have revegetated the creek. I have put in water troughs so that my cattle do not go to the creek. As you would know, they walk through a creek to go to a water trough, so if you have water troughs you can protect your creek so that they do not do that. Why do we do that? I do that because I want to leave my property in better shape than when I got it. I look at my family. I had wonderful parents and I am, as a parent, trying to be a great parent because I want my each of my children—and I am sure they will be, which is probably more of a credit to my wife than I—to be a better person than I am. That is what I want to contribute in the sense that my property will be a better property and my children will be better people. That is because we are into sustainability.

What is this Intergenerational report about? It is about economic sustainability. With what we are doing here, we can imagine ourselves as a family. Let's do that: we are a family with a family budget. What would this family be discussing right now? This family would be saying, 'Right, six years ago we had a certain amount of income and no debt. Six years on, we have more income. We are actually earning lots more money than we were six years ago, but we have been spending more money every year for six years and we have racked up a debt.' Income can go up or down; it is a thing that is sometimes outside your control as a family, as it can be for a country. We should be looking at this as if we are a family. Six years ago, we had no debt. We now have a lot. There are risks on the horizon, as this Intergenerational report talks about. We need to have a discussion about what, as a family, we are going to do. Are we going to keep on spending more money every year? How secure is our income when some of those things are out of our control?

That is what this would be about. As a family, we would also be saying, unfortunately, that over that six years as a family we have not bought necessarily any assets that are going to produce as money or we have not bought anything that is going to produce us income. We have just increased our recurrent expenditure. We have not actually spent this money or run up this debt on anything that is going to generate us money. What should this family do? What should we as a country do? Are we going to keep spending? Obviously, some countries and some families do. It has been mentioned before in this MPI that countries like Greece have done that. What happens then? The people that owe you the money and the bankers then become your controllers. We as a country certainty do not ever want to get into this.

I have read this report. I think it is very well produced. I acknowledge Treasury for producing this report. I think there is a lot in this for us to acknowledge. As we well know, from the debt that we have run up, we have $1 billion in interest that we pay every month to cover this debt. We are spending $100 million a day more than we get in. It is an issue that we need to address. Again, I say that the attack on this report is outrageous. Popularist politics might feel good in the short term, but it gives the country a long-term headache. (Time expired)

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