Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In less than six weeks, the federal budget will be handed down by the Treasurer, and tonight I'd like to briefly reflect on one aspect of budgets past. It was 16 years ago that the then Treasurer, Peter Costello, handed down his seventh budget, and amongst the budget papers tabled that night was the landmark Intergenerational report, budget paper No. 5. This was a visionary report, for the first time setting out to highlight for debate and to consider the long-term fiscal implications of government outlays and the implications of Australia's shifting demographics.

Governments are often criticised for being short term in their thinking, and these criticisms are sometimes fair, which makes the conception of and the making of intergenerational reports an embedded part of Australia's budget framework all the more visionary and impressive an achievement. Australian governments are now required to produce such a report every five years. The central purpose of the report is to assess the fiscal implications of continuing current policies and trends over the next four decades—a 40-year forecast of sorts. In addition to the original Intergenerational report in 2002, subsequent reports were handed down in 2007, in 2010 and the latest in 2015.

The original Intergenerational report in 2002 looked ahead to 2042, and we're rapidly approaching now the halfway mark for those original long-term fiscal projections. The seismic demographic changes, particularly the ageing population, that were starkly set out in that first Intergenerational report are fast becoming a reality. As one of the younger MPs in this place, I have a particular interest in ensuring that the crucial issue of intergenerational equity is properly considered when we make or evaluate government programs. Of course, projections of revenue and expenditure and population shifts over 40 years are inherently uncertain—the intergenerational reports certainly make no bones about that fact—but the trend is our friend, so to speak, and successive reports have been very important in focusing public attention on some of the longer term challenges ahead for Australian policymakers.

Of course, one of the greatest threats to the budget at this point in time, to the Future Fund reserves and to intergenerational equity is the opposition—the Labor Party. So it's of great concern that the Labor Party, addicted as it is to spending taxpayers' dollars with little regard for the longer term implications, might raid the Future Fund if it were ever returned to government. This isn't an idle prospect. The Labor Party has form when it comes to raiding these funds. When last in government, it took Labor almost no time at all to raid the Education Investment Fund and the Health and Hospitals Fund, both of which are administered by the Future Fund, and deplete them almost to zero. The capital funds in them that had been earmarked for nation-building funds and programs were squandered by Labor to fund its so-called stimulus packages. It was short-term thinking—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

at its worst. The member for Moreton interjects to suggest that he is a huge advocate of that sort of short-term thinking. Needless to say, the former Labor government did not add to the capital of the Future Fund, because they never delivered a surplus.

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