Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Financial stewardship is one of the most important tasks with which governments and parliamentarians are entrusted. We all individually have a solemn responsibility which requires a determination of purpose and a strength of character. Too often governments and parliamentarians, aided and abetted by elements in the media, think that public office is simply about tickling people's ears, getting their votes and spending their money. This is a contemptible, shallow and dishonest approach and it is why, some time ago, I called for the reintroduction of the debt ceiling. Let us be clear: Labor had a debt ceiling that they knew could not be kept. They had a trajectory which they knew would break through that ceiling and, try as we might to restrain expenditure within this place, the Labor Party, led by Mr Shorten, deliberately voted against $5 billion worth of their own savings that they took to the election—savings which they promised the Australian people they would make. We put forward the Labor savings and Labor, the Greens and others then rejected those savings.

Government does not have any money of its own—it either borrows it or takes it out of the pockets of our fellow Australians. Our expenditures here are very, very serious, and we need to consider them in that light. The simple fact is that no country has ever borrowed or taxed its way into wealth. We have to be responsible with our expenditure, and it is absolutely reprehensible when this generation of leadership in Australia seeks to maintain its standard of living at the expense of the next generation, which will have to repay that debt with interest. That is why some of us are, quite rightly, exercised about the size of the ever-growing debt burden, and I congratulate the government for reining it in. But even more needs to be done, and I call on all senators to join in that task to ensure that we have genuine intergenerational financial responsibility.