Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Higher education. You could come up with a humungous number. On the other side of the ledger, I could go through tax revenue and accumulate that over a period and come up with a humongous number.

Yes, there are budgetary pressures that come over time from growth in all sorts of budgetary outlays, but that of itself is not an argument for choosing to cut back one outlay rather than another. There has to be a policy rationale for what you do, and what I am arguing here is that the rationale is more ideological than it is essentially budgetary. Why ideological? I mentioned earlier the longstanding antipathy to these sorts of measures which promote greater choice between public and private sectors, but there is another element to this, and that element has been added by none other than your distinguished colleague, Mr Acting Deputy President Cameron, the Treasurer—it is his Monthly essay, his vituperative attack on three Australians who are risk takers and entrepreneurs out there earning their keep and providing jobs for their fellow Australians.

What I found remarkable about that contribution is that it was a deliberate attempt to set one Australian against another. It was a deliberate attempt to set allegedly working-class Australians and middle-class Australians against other Australians. I thought it was deplorable for that reason, because what unites most Australians today is a set of aspirations. We all want to do better. We do not want to be penalised for having a go. Having a go is as important to us as a fair go, and I thought that essay highlighted that the Treasurer was interested merely in seeking to stoke the politics of envy for reasons perhaps related to trying to get the public debate off the leadership crisis in the Labor Party and onto more fertile territory.