Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are an optimistic nation and, frankly, I think you could say we rate ourselves, whether it is in a sporting contest, economically or in tourism. At any level, we are a country that is enormously optimistic. We are not, of course, unblemished by error. At times, we have elected a Labor government that has plunged us into debt and deficit, but at the heart of it all we are optimistic enough to know that we can make our way through it.

Of course, in any international comparison, we do not have the debt that other nations do. We often turn to Europe and look for the saviour of Europe, the banking nation of Germany, which only has a 55 per cent debt-to-GDP ratio. On that comparison, it is favourable, but let us never forget the strong and resilient AAA rated banks of 2009. Let us never forget the strong mining sector. And let us never forget the large surplus, the large cupboard of resources, that John Howard left for the Labor Party to help them through that global financial crisis.

The answer was quite simple. In late 2008 Treasury did panic, with inappropriate modelling, to find that there would be a gap in our GDP thanks to the crisis, but within six months they had corrected their input, understood that we were not directly tied to the American economy and revised their estimates in early 2009 to say that there would not be a hole in our GDP. But, of course, politically that was not good news for Rudd and Swan, who continued on their crazy 6.5-per-cent-of-GDP stimulus, which ran for four years and ran us into the ground.

Coming from Brisbane as the member for Ryan does, she will be very familiar with those tunnel borers that work their way quietly under Brisbane building those magnificent tunnels. That was the Labor Party, plunging us down, entombing us in debt and then, of course, getting stuck and having to be bailed out. This was a Labor Party strategy, of course, that had no end. They could neither stop the boats nor stop the debt, so that has fallen upon us, through no fault of our own. We are determined to find solutions.

But I say today that in 2015 we are a different nation. We have gone through extraordinary, tough choices in 2014. We have taken tough choices around stopping new spending, treating taxpayers' money with respect, being cautious about overspending, and pulling back, often pausing and freezing, payments in order to get that tumbling deficit under control. John Howard once said that going into debt is easy—it is like riding an escalator down to the basement—but coming out of debt is the hard work. It is like climbing up a fire escape.

I can never promise the people in the gallery an easy path, but I can say that young Australians primarily view their life as one that is together, in many ways, with a large amount of private debt. It is something they have become used to. So they expect government to be able to manage public debt without sacrificing our ability to put food on the table, have security in our jobs and access the essential services that we could afford last year. They are not always cheap, but they should be affordable.

In 2015, we are looking for an optimistic projection of where this country could go. We are looking for a road show about the Intergenerational report that does not say that we are all doomed—that does not make puerile projections about needing to treble GST if we do nothing by 2030, in some sort of Malthusian fallacy that nothing ever changes. Of course times will change. Of course international appetite for our resources will change. Of course conditions, our currency and our terms of trade will all change. They are very, very hard to predict. We cannot even predict the budget deficit for this year within a few billion dollars. Why should we be overly reliant on generational predictions?

My point is this: Australians are fundamentally optimistic, and they want an optimistic message from their government that we can do this together by working together. We can do it by driving growth, by driving revenue, by driving entrepreneurship and through that opportunity—because government just has one job at hand, and that is to provide, fundamentally, opportunity to its people. In the end, we can shuffle money between citizens, but we have to provide opportunity for everyone and give them every chance at success. And that must be the message in 2015.

Let us not be overly reliant on intergenerational predictions which basically say we must go without now in order to give money to someone a generation from now. Let us not be overly reliant on tax white papers that are basically smokescreens to say we are trying to change the amount of tax we pay.

Australians are asking for a projection that is clear and optimistic, and that can be done by identifying what Australia's great assets are and capitalising on them. Australians, particularly young Australians, know fundamentally what they are: we dream more than anything of gaining a qualification, and we do not mind paying for what we deserve and what we have earned. We do not mind as long as we know we have a chance at owning our own place, at getting and keeping a job and at making sure that services are available those who need them most. There is not so much a budget emergency, but we have a fairness emergency, and it is something that must be addressed in 2015.