Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I will tell you how it is going, member for Batman: we were on track for a growing budget deficit. In fact, we would face continuous budget deficits for the next 40 years—that is how it is going—had we not done something.

But as a result of the tough decisions we have taken since coming to office, we have started to get spending growth under control—something Labor is not used to, but we are. There is still more to do, and we understand that we are going to need to bring the community along with us.

As the member for Moncrieff and parliamentary secretary to the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Trade put it during this debate: 'It's easy to be Santa Claus'. It is easy to tell people they can have whatever they want and not to worry about the consequences. We credit the Australian people with a little more nous than that. And that is why the IGR is such an important document—it demonstrates what is at stake tomorrow from the decisions we take today. And what is at stake is nothing less than the living standards that our children and grandchildren will enjoy.

In closing, I would like to highlight five areas relating to the delivery of the government's commitments that are supported by these bills. First, these bills provide the Department of Defence with just under $558 million, reflecting, in the main, additional funding for Defence's overseas operations; the re-appropriation of amounts between Appropriation Acts to better align funding with Defence's current work programs; and supplementation for foreign exchange movements. I know the member for Batman will be interested in that, because I know how interested he is in defence. But he also knows how under Labor we let Defence slip as a proportion of gross domestic product down—down to 1938 levels.

On this side of the House, we are certainly interested—here we go.

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