Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline to the House how the government is continuing to deliver responsible budget management? How is the government guaranteeing essential services for all Australians?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Canning for his question, because he's part of a government that is committed to, and is delivering, keeping spending under control and keeping taxes under control. We've handed down a budget which sees net debt fall by $30 billion over the next four years. We have turned the corner on debt. It has taken us five years to wind back the reckless spending of the Labor Party and turn the debt ship around and to ensure that from this point we are reducing net debt in this country by $30 billion over the next four years and more than $230 billion over the next 10 years, and we do that simply by living within our means.

The government lives within its means, just like all Australians live within their means. Australians know that the Labor Party have no idea how to live within their means, because every time they get in they just wreck the joint. They just wreck the joint because they cannot live within their means. That's why they always put up taxes. They just keep jacking up the taxes because they don't know how to control expenditure. This is a government that is living within its means—1.6 per cent real growth in expenditure over the next four years, less than two per cent since the time we came to government. Under the Labor Party, real growth and expenditure averaged four per cent—more than double what we are now doing as a government.

When you live within your means, when you provide for a stronger economy, it means you can do the things that guarantee the essential services that Australians rely on. And it's not the rolled-gold guarantee of the Leader of the Opposition. That's fool's gold if you're going to rely on the fake rolled-gold guarantees of the Leader of the Opposition. Our guarantees are based on knowing that you need to create a strong economy to guarantee the essential services that Australians rely on: the National Disability Insurance Scheme; $1.4 billion for affordable new medicines under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme; record health funding of $34.4 billion and our new hospitals agreement—$30 billion in additional funding for hospitals—which state and territory governments all around the country are signing up to over the next five years; and $24.5 billion in additional funding for our schools, which is 50 per cent more per student on average. By guaranteeing our focus on building a stronger economy, that is what pays for everything.

Those opposite, the Labor Party, just think that money falls from the sky. They must be so foolish to think that and even to believe the rolled-gold promises of the Leader of the Opposition. Well, the Australian people won't be fooled by this rolled-gold failure and this rolled-gold fate. What we see in the Leader of the Opposition is a shifty character. He's shifty as.