Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware of recent research commissioned by the Victorian government that found that 135,000 Victorian homes and nine per cent of the state’s businesses do not even have access to fixed line broadband? Why has the Prime Minister failed to deliver an effective broadband network to Australia’s hardworking small business community?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am aware of a lot of research, and I am not disputing that there may have been research commissioned by the Victorian government, but the facts, as I am advised in relation to broadband, are that Australia does have the second fastest take-up rate in the OECD and that close to 90 per cent of Australian households and small businesses can already access fast, multimegabyte broadband speeds.

Honourable Member:

Megabit.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, megabit. That is not really the big point at issue today. There is probably a view on both sides of politics that more continues to be required in relation to broadband, but it is how you provide it that matters and how you pay for it. What has been opened up today is an enormous gap between the commitment of the coalition to Australia’s future and the desire of the Labor Party to spend the savings of future generations—

Kim Wilkie (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Wilkie interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Swan is warned!

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

to finance the consumption of the current generation. There is something called intergenerational equity. I have just been in Japan, where it is predicted that by the year 2050 42 per cent of the population will be over the age of 65 and that there will be a situation where the burden of those in the workforce caring for those who are out of the workforce will be on a ratio of 1.2 to one. That is dramatically worse than the situation in this country. Ours is a lesser problem, but it is still a problem. The reason why we paid off debt and the reason why I very strongly supported the proposal of the Treasurer and the finance minister to have a Future Fund was that I wanted to set aside money that would not be touched by any government to meet the liabilities of the budget in decades into the future because I did not want to put the sort of burden on the backs of future generations of Australians that would otherwise be the case if we did not make that provision.

The debate here is about the future; it is not about the present. The future is very important. There are many people in older generations who worry about how their children are going to cope with an increasingly ageing population. It is the biggest single economic challenge that this country has. The way you care for it is to set aside money out of today’s surpluses to provide for tomorrow’s liabilities. In plain language, Australians call it putting money aside for a rainy day—and we have not had too many of those recently; we pray there will be a lot more. The greatest obligation we have collectively in today’s generation, a very rich and fortunate generation, is to harvest some of that richness and some of that good fortune and lay it aside for the future.

I thought we had the support of the Labor Party on this. I thought they believed in caring for the future. But what they have done today is to sell out the interests of future generations. This is the tip of the iceberg. Once you have started with the Future Fund in relation to broadband, once you have tasted it, you will find it irresistible. You will be seduced into doing it for something else. This is the old Labor back in business: they raid the savings for future generations in order to pay for current consumption. We are against that. We want to make prudent provision for future generations. That is why we established the Future Fund.