Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Can I just start with what I believe to be one of the great truths about this place: there is not one person in this place who does not want to leave this country a better place than before they got through the front doors here. We all want to do the right thing. We have differing opinions and ideas on how that will happen, but, generally speaking, we all believe that we should live within our means, that the budget should be run in surplus and debt kept as low as humanly possible, to protect us against the unforeseen headwinds which may come along from time to time. That is what households must do. That is what business must do. We must have a plan for the future. The bills have to get paid and the wages have to get paid before you take the profit. The way we decide on how the bills get paid and who pays them is that we have an election. We won the election in 2013 on a basis of fixing the budget mess.

I welcome the withdrawal of the amendment, and I welcome the words of the shadow Treasurer, the member for McMahon, about the more conciliatory and rational approach. Governments are elected to fix these things, and we have our say in this House of Representatives. What we have to do is make sure that the Senate understand that they are there to represent the states, not their individual constituencies. The Senate are there to represent the states' interests and not some small sliver of the population in a state or around Australia. That is what we must do in this place. We have to be held to account for the actions that we do—and, when we go to the people next, we will be held accountable for the actions that we do.

We all make sure that we live within our means as much as possible, but, if you do rattle up a debt, sooner or later it has to be repaid. There was an Andy Capp cartoon years ago where Andy Capp was walking down the street and he yelled back at the bloke at the TV store, 'I'll have you up on false advertising!' He said, 'Anyone who believes any repayment is easy is a liar.' When you pay it back, any loan repayment you make comes out of your net income, and all payments hurt. What we have done through a number of parliaments—not just through the 43rd Parliament or in the response to the GFC but over a number of parliaments—is to saddle the taxpayers and the people of this country with an unsustainable budget into the future. If we do not face up to it and do the right thing by the people of Australia, we will be as bad as anybody else in the world.

So what we have done here is accept that, when we pass things, we have to stand up and take responsibility for them. I commend the bill to the House, and I welcome the change of heart from the people on the opposite benches and hope that the Senate will pay due deference to the words that have been said in this place about how we balance our budget. I thank the House.

See this speech in context