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

The government remains committed to do what needs to be done to put Australia on a stronger foundation for the future. The government remains committed to do what needs to be done to strengthen economic growth, to create more jobs, to help families, and to ensure that the important benefits and services of government are affordable in the economy, and are affordable for taxpayers over the long term, and indeed forever. As I indicated to the chamber yesterday, as a result of the ageing of the population, we are going from a situation where right now we have about 4.5 Australians of traditional working age for every Australian aged 65 and over, going down to 2.7 Australians of traditional working age for every Australian aged 65 and over—so that obviously means that there is a growing pressure on a smaller number of working taxpayers to fund the larger number of services over the decades to come. We need to ensure that we are in the strongest possible position to deal with that challenge. We are dealing with it. When is the Labor Party going to stop being in a state of denial about the disastrous situation that they have left behind? (Time expired)