Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Budget repair is critically important if we are to protect our living standards, if we are to build opportunity and prosperity for the future and if we want to ensure that we do not reduce opportunities for our children and grandchildren. That is because the situation the Labor Party left behind—having inherited a strong budget position, a strong surplus and money in the bank and net interest payments on the back of a positive net-asset position—is a situation where every year now we have got to put our hands into the pockets of our children and grandchildren, forcing them to pay for our lifestyle today and forcing them to pay for a proportion of our recurrent expenditure year-on-year.

That is fundamentally unfair because what it means is that down the track our children and grandchildren would have to accept either lower services from government or higher taxes from government in order to pay for the budget mess and the debt and deficit disaster the Labor Party has left behind. On this side we are working very hard to sort this out in order to improve opportunities for our children and grandchildren. (Time expired)