Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

One thing that never ceases to amaze me when we have this particular debate about debt is that I am not quite sure what the opposition want. On one hand, when we come into this place and try and put in some tough measures to try and restore the budget, they throw a whole heap of mud at us and say, 'You can't do that; you're being too tough in the budget'. Now, when the Prime Minister has acknowledged that a softer approach will occur at the next budget, we are being attacked because we are supposedly being too soft. I am not quite sure what the opposition wants us to do.

Senator Wong rose a moment ago and spoke about the debt situation. I congratulate Senator Wong. She is about to become a parent again in a few weeks time. I know that, as a parent, I am certainly not going to spend and build a debt that I am going to make my children pay. The one thing that responsible parents do, just like responsible governments should do, is live within their means. To stand in here and suggest that it is responsible to continue on building and increasing the level of debt this country so that our children and their children have to continue to pay it off seems a little bit odd, because I am sure that nobody in this place who is a parent would do that to their children. Therefore, I do not believe that any government should be doing it to their people.

We talk about the debt to GDP ratio and the comment that the debt to GDP ratio in Australia, at the moment, is probably not as high as it is in some of the countries that we trade with. One of the things that we have to remember is that the rate at which our deficit is increasing is much, much higher than the rate for the majority of countries that we do business with. Whilst things may be okay at the moment, if you have the fastest rising deficit, it does not take a rocket scientist to realise that in a minute we will have a debt to GDP ratio problem. We also need to remember the fact that Australia is an extraordinarily trade-exposed nation. It is a country that relies extraordinarily on exports. So therefore we are not in the same position as many of our trading partners overseas, or the countries which we benchmark ourselves against in this particular space. I think we just need to be very careful that we compare apples with apples.

Unlike those opposite when they came into government in 2007, we came into government with a massive debt. They came in with a surplus. They had money to spend, and so they did. They spent it; they certainly spent it. We came to government with a massive debt and an increasing deficit. We thought that a very sensible thing for all responsible governments is to do something about our debt.