Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last night we saw the budget delivered by a Labor government that is out of ideas. It's a budget bereft of any fiscal credibility. It is a budget that delivers no solutions to the challenges faced by Australians. It is a budget that offers no help to households and holds out no hope for business. It is a budget that will only perpetuate the malaise and stagnation felt across the Australian economy.

This budget does not get to grips with wasteful, out-of-control government spending. This year, real government spending will grow by six per cent and the economy only by 1.5 per cent. Government spending is at a record 27.4 per cent of GDP, the highest in four decades outside of COVID, and we've seen a $43 billion deterioration in the budget balance in a single year, with a decade of deficits to come.

This budget does not help households. Australians have suffered the largest fall in living standards in the developed world under Labor, and Labor is offering you 70c a day in 15 months time, at the same time that it plans to take at least five times as much as this from you by growing tax on your income over the next decade.

This budget does nothing to help business, to encourage investment or to address our national decline in productivity, and this budget does not address our urgent defence needs. At the same time we are being told we face the most dangerous and uncertain strategic environment in decades, we are spending as much on the NDIS as we are on our entire Defence Force.

Labor's fiscal plan is setting us up for a wasted decade. They have no ambition for Australia. Their sole ambition is for themselves: to retain power whilst presiding over a continued national decline. This is no future for Australia.