Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

What they do not quite understand on the other side is that when your economy grows you get higher taxes to GDP. We had a weak economy under the former government, and that is why taxes to GDP fell precipitously in their first years of government. They had plans, in similar years to us, to increase taxes to GDP. If you compare year to year, and that is the appropriate comparison, taxes are now lower under a coalition government than they would have been under a Labor government. They wanted to hit our wealth-producing industries with a carbon tax and a mining tax and put jobs at risk across the whole economy. We are serious in this government.

I want to take up some of the points that Senator Sterle raised. It is about last year's budget—which they continue to want to talk about. We are serious about achieving serious reform of our spending system. So much of our spending goes towards health and education, but we are on an unsustainable path in growth of those particular spending initiatives. I do not know if the Labor Party reads the budget papers, but on page five of 23 the budget paper states that we spend around $18 billion a year on public hospitals. It is growing at somewhere between six and seven per cent a year at the moment. If that rate of growth continues for 40 years, hospital spending alone will take a third to 50 per cent, depending on how you measure it, of our Commonwealth budget. We cannot do that; it would be absurd.

Somebody has to be serious here. Some serious people have to sit down and work out how we can deliver the great hospital services we have in this nation affordably. We are the party that is about serious discussions in our nation, about how we can grow jobs and opportunity and a sustainable Public Service. The other side simply wants to oppose. We cannot return to that path.