Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Mallee for his question and recognise that whilst Australians are obviously living longer and life expectancy in 1992 was around 72, today we have the equal highest life expectancy in the world and by the middle of this century it will be close to 100. I recognise that the member for Mallee has often pointed out that in his part of the country life expectancy is less than that. It is not a uniform indicator. But what it does indicate is that as a nation we are living longer. That is to be welcomed. We are wealthier as a nation. That is to be welcomed as well. And what we have to do is make sure we can afford the services that are going to ensure that our quality of life, not only today but well into the future, is even better than that which belonged to our parents in the years before us.

It is hugely important that government lives within its means to help along the way. At the moment the Australian government is spending $100 million a day more than it collects in revenue. That is $100 million a day that we have to borrow, overwhelmingly from people living overseas, in order to pay our day-to-day bills running the government—paying for Medicare, paying for welfare, paying for defence needs. We have to borrow $100 million every day just to pay our bills. That is clearly not sustainable. And it is not sustainable because our spending trajectory, as illustrated in the Intergenerational report, was heading up to a third of our GDP. A third of our economy would be federal government expenditure alone. But the highest ever level of tax was around a quarter of our economy. So, clearly, the numbers just do not add up. Therefore, we have to start living within our means. We have to make sure that we reduce expenditure but at the same time try to deliver better services to ensure that the government and taxpayers get better bang for their buck.

The fundamental challenge going forward is that we are seeing an enormous disruption to tradition in our economy—the traditional areas where government has been active, regulating the economy in banking, in broadcasting, in transport and logistics. All these things, all these areas of government regulation, are being substantially challenged by the new empowerment of consumers. And consumers are actively going directly to the source rather than using intermediaries. That means that government is not able to regulate economies the way it was 10 years ago or two decades ago. So the challenge is there. This government is up for the challenge. This government is responding to the challenge, and we are inviting the Australian people to participate in that conversation.

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