Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting that the Labor Party is supportive of all these initiatives—with the exception of Mersey, where we have no idea what their position is. They support the $10 billion investment in the Murray-Darling Basin Commission over the next 10 years. They support, I gather, our Northern Territory intervention. Now they are apparently quibbling about the cost of the Northern Territory intervention. It is the case that, once we sent survey teams on to the ground and realised the extent to which assistance was going to be needed to ensure that we do deliver and that we protect children in the Northern Territory from child abuse, we realised that it was going to be a $587 million program in the course of this financial year. The great thing is that, as a result of the very hard work which the government have put in over 11 years to restore the Commonwealth finances from the shambles that we inherited, the Commonwealth budget is in a position where it can meet these sorts of expenditures—which, as I noted, the Labor Party does support.

As to the reference to the Treasurer’s remarks, as I said on Meet the Press, it is the job of the Treasurer and the finance minister to worry about the future sustainability of all Commonwealth government programs. That is why we are there. It is our job to continue to remind all our colleagues that we have to ensure the sustainability of Commonwealth finances going forward. That is why it is our government that introduced the Intergenerational report, which has the 40- to 50-year forecast of what will happen to the Commonwealth finances as a result of demographic ageing. We are the ones who have gone out of our way to point out to the Australian people, and indeed to the opposition, the risks to the Commonwealth budget that are inherent in demographic ageing and the sorts of measures which are required now to ensure that sustainability.

Those measures go to things like welfare to work reform. They go to things like increasing the productivity of this country through industrial relations reform. The Labor Party are saying, ‘We are worrying about Commonwealth finances.’ The worst thing you can possibly do to the sustainability of Commonwealth finances is to destroy the productivity-improving industrial relations changes which we have brought in. If the Labor Party get into office and take this country back to the pre-Keating era in industrial relations—which the ACTU will ensure that they do—then the productivity of this country will suffer enormously and the capacity of this country to generate revenues to meet the burdens that we face in health and aged care will be put seriously at risk.

We are very proud of our fiscal record. This government has demonstrated the greatest fiscal restraint of any government for at least the last 30 years. The average increase in real spending under our government is lower than any of the previous three governments. We do exercise fiscal restraint. We have been attacked by the Labor Party for most of the 11 years that we have been exercising that restraint. After every budget, the Labor Party shadow spokesmen in every single area all come out and complain that we have not spent enough. No matter what we spend, no matter what our new programs are, Labor comes out and says, ‘You haven’t spent enough.’ Do not give us a lecture about fiscal prudence.