Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I would like to talk about the complete disconnect for anyone following parliament today and listening to speeches from members of the opposition or reading much of our media between the economic realities that this country faces and what is being espoused on the other side of this chamber. If we go back six years—that is not that long ago—the Commonwealth government was receiving $1 billion into the Treasury every year in interest on the money that the Howard and Costello government put away after paying off Labor's debt, plus interest. We then had six years of deficit after deficit. We as the incoming coalition government faced an interest bill and interest liability this year of $13.5 billion. That is $13.5 billion that this coalition government must find to pay the interest. That is interest only. That is not paying one cent of the principal. That is the interest only on the six years of Labor's debt.

Often $13.5 billion can seem an abstract amount. If we break that down, it works out at $570 for every man, woman and child in the country. That is the additional cost that they must pay for six years of Labor deficits.

Many of us go out doorknocking; we go from house to house. The average household in my electorate is a household of four people. For every household of four in the country, we need to come up with $2,280 just to pay the interest. Each month it is a total of $1.125 billion. Each week $260 million must come out of taxpayers' pockets to pay the interest on the debt of six years of Labor's waste. It is $37 million a day. For every single hour of every single day of every single week of every single month of the year, it is $1.5 million dollars in interest payments alone. What is most scary is that 70 per cent of that, at least, goes overseas—because that is where the previous Labor government borrowed that money from.

It is very sad when anyone loses their job. We hear about the job cuts at the ABC through the efficiency dividend of $50 million they have been asked to find every year. But to put that $50 million in context, it would pay the interest for only 33 hours of the year—forget the other 363 days of the year. That is the efficiency cut on the ABC. It is sad to hear of the 400 jobs lost, but where were the tears for the more than 500,000 jobs in small business that were lost under the previous Labor government as they ground them into the ground with their red tape and higher taxes? Where were they?

Surprisingly, those whingeing the loudest—especially in the media—about the hard and difficult decisions that we in the coalition government are making actually acted as the cheer squad for this mob sitting over on the other side while they ran up the debt that now causes the nation to have to pay that interest. What solution does the opposition come up with? Instead of working with the government to work out how we can become more productive as a nation and lift efficiencies, they simply want to go back for more of the same: more wasteful spending, more debt and more deficit. All that does is make the liability for our children and our grandchildren even greater. There are some hard decisions that this government must make, but we are doing so because we put the future of our country first.