Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When they handed the account to Labor, there was money in the bank. There was money in the bank, Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton; you would remember it well. But that is where the wheels fell off, as we all know. During Labor's six years in the driver's seat, how many surpluses were there?

Honourable members interjecting—

I do not think there were any. The member for McMahon and the member for Lilley promised a surplus. How many times did they promise a surplus? It was over and over again. They promised and promised, but could not even break even—not even once. They left a trail of destruction and a whopping great hole, and spent billions of dollars that they simply did not have. They did not have it. They tried to buy friends, offering all sorts of sundries and handouts, whether they wanted them or not. They tried to pass off their willy-nilly spending as sound economic strategy. They were stimulating the economy—stimulating the national gag reflex, as it turned out, because Australians wised up and cut them loose.

The problem, though, is that we inherited the fallout of Labor's reckless and irresponsible spending. When I say 'we', I am not talking about the government. The truth be told, when we took the public purse from Labor, we knew it was going to be empty. It came as no surprise. But it is not the government who have to cop it. It is not the government who have to cop their incompetence; it is the Australian people.

Mr Watts interjecting—

Thank you, member for Goldstein. It is mums and dads, families and aged pensioners. Everyone under the age of 30 who is listening today is going to have higher taxes and increased spending. And what do we have from the shadow Treasurer, the member for McMahon? He has negative gearing and capital gains tax reform. Let's forget about what it does to rent or how much money it will actually raise. It will be bugger-all.

They voted against the 2015 multinational tax avoidance bill. The member for Rankin is a smooth talker. Is that dude a smooth talker? He is a smooth politician. He is good at telling a story, but he does not come here to represent the Australian people and what is in their best interests; he represents what is best for him. He asks, 'How do I get that "honourable" in front of my name?' The member for Fenner says: 'Blame the coalition. Their debt's bigger.' That is what they are saying. But seriously, what could we do with the $15 billion that we are currently paying in interest every year? It is $15 billion. Dolphin Stadium was just built in my electorate at Redcliffe. You could build 1,579 of those a year with $15 billion. I need an overpass at Carseldine worth about $100 million. We could build 150 of those every year. We could fund all the 72 joint strike fighters we are about to have delivered or 15 new Moreton Bay rail links at $1 billion each. We could quadruple the foreign aid budget or replace the education budget.

The $15 billion a year in interest that was left to us compounds, and of course the deficit grows when you have that sort of interest. What do Labor do? They come in here and they block and block and block everything. They did not even vote to rein in multinationals in 2015. They did not even vote for that. The Labor Party are like the rogue tenant that took six years to evict and now they stand trying to guard their damage and refuse to allow the emergency services, us, to clean up the mess.

The productivity in this place is horrible. I come in here some days and sit down and think, 'Do I have to listen to this? Fair dinkum. The productivity is shocking.' We do three MPIs a week. What would be great is getting rid of a couple of them. We get the shadow frontbench and the rugby scrum over there. Some of them are smart individuals. I have no problem with that. Then you have our frontbench and we work out how we could help the Australian people. On the weekend, Peter van Onselen ran an article in The Australian, saying:

The uncomfortable truth that no politician wants to confront is that Australia doesn’t have a plan to pay down the national debt. Worse still, there isn’t even a plan to develop a plan.

How are we going to pay off $500 billion? I say we need bipartisan support. (Time expired)

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