Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2025-2026, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026
Senator HUME (Victoria) (18:56): I rise to speak on the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026 and Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2025-2026, collectively known as the additional appropriations bills. These bills determine exactly how taxpayer dollars will be spent for the rest of the financial year. This is a decision that obviously deserves scrutiny, but it certainly doesn't require a rubber stamp.
That said, the opposition will not be opposing these bills. We recognise that they are a necessary mechanism for the continued functioning of government, but do not mistake this for one second as a pass. The reckless spending, weak discipline and waste that have defined this government are not things that we support, and they are not things that we will let go unchecked.
Every dollar that the government spends is a dollar that is earned by hardworking Australians. Government spending is a declaration of priorities. These bills, collectively, tell Australians everything they need to know about Labor's priorities.
Appropriation is not simply an act of administration; it's an act of trust—a trust that governments will be spending your money carefully, wisely and only where necessary. The Albanese government has time and time again betrayed that trust. This government is taking in more revenue than any government in 40 years.
There is more money rolling through the door. There's $717 billion in receipts. It's quite extraordinary.
That's equal to 25.9 per cent of GDP, and yet it's still running deficits. That's the highest level of government revenue since 1986-87, as a percentage of GDP. It's equal to the level achieved under the Howard government in 2000, but with one crucial and stark difference.
The Howard government ran a surplus. It used its strong revenues to do what is most important, and that is to pay down debt. This government, however, does the exact opposite.
It spends every single cent that it collects and then some. After it has spent your money, it then borrows more. It treats the public purse—the money of ordinary, hardworking Australians—as its own personal bailout fund.
That's not the only record that Labor has managed to break either. The Albanese government is spending 26.2 per cent of GDP. That is the highest level outside of a pandemic or financial crisis in nearly four decades.
Real spending growth is 5.5 per cent. That is almost three times the rate under the Rudd-Gillard-Swan era. Spending is now $160 billion higher than when the government came to office.
That's a $160 billion blowout, or, put another way, it's $16,000 taken from every single household in Australia. That's not budget restraint; that's reckless spending dressed up as responsibility. Wherever there is a chance to make a rational, commonsense decision, Labor actively chooses to take an opposite or ideological path.
You don't have to trust me on this. Both a former Treasury secretary, Ken Henry, and the former RBA governor Philip Lowe have urged spending restraint. As Dr Lowe put it last year, it seems to be, 'Where there is a need, we'll spend.' The current RBA governor, Michele Bullock, has sounded that alarm as well.
She warns that government spending is growing very quickly and revenue not as strongly. When she said that, she also said, 'We need to make hay while the sun shines.' She wasn't talking about farmers there, clearly; she was talking about the Treasurer. She was sending him a message of fiscal restraint.
Did he listen? Independent economists are just as clear. Stephen Walters, the chief economist of Optimal Economics, called the lack of fiscal rules in place by this government a key reason that Australia has fallen into a budget black hole.
He pointed to the root of the problem. He said it was 'one of the first substantive things that Treasurer Chalmers did back in 2022' and 'his first big mistake'. Fiscal rules are not there to be bureaucratic tools.
They are not there for decoration. They are not there to put unnecessary grit in the wheels. They are a discipline.
They are what keeps spending contained. That's what stops the natural urge of governments to spend and spend more and more. They keep spending disciplined, transparent and sustainable.
When those rules are thrown out, when they're ignored, when they're dismissed, accountability disappears. Deficits don't just happen; they then become a habit. You don't need to look too far into those blue budget books to see that that habit has already set in.
Rather than taking these warnings seriously, the government keeps spending. They spend as though interest rates don't matter. Maybe they don't to those who sit on the benches, but they certainly do to ordinary Australians—ordinary Australians who might have a mortgage, a personal loan or a car loan.
Maybe they have a business loan or an overdraft. That is to whom interest rates really matter. The government spends as though debt will never come due, and perhaps it won't under this government.
Perhaps they will all be long gone, kicking up their heels in a happy retirement, while that debt gets paid for by the next generation. They spend as though those future generations won't be left to clean up their mess, but they will. Labor's addiction to spending has kept inflation higher for longer.
You don't need to believe me; this is what economists are saying. This is what central bankers, administrators and regulators have said. This is the consequence of a government that believes that every problem can be solved by throwing a bit more money at it.
But it's not their money they are throwing; it's your money that they are throwing. They have jettisoned the sensible fiscal rules, the first big mistake of the Treasurer, as has been said, and now, as the economic weather turns, that rainy day fund is empty. When Labor came to office, it inherited some of the strongest terms of trade this country has ever seen.
It inherited record revenues and a world economy that was still recovering from COVID. Four years on, we have debt as far as the eye can see—$1 trillion of it, no less—and we have no plan to repay it. There are also deficits as far as the eye can see.
That red ink extends beyond the pages of the budget books. Appropriation bills aren't just a formality; they are a reflection. They're a reflection of the values that guide this government's decision-making.
They show whether a government believes in discipline or whether it believes in decadence. They show whether a government believes that Australians can be trusted to spend their own money or whether they think that Canberra knows best. Australians deserve better than a government that spends like there's no tomorrow and then acts suddenly surprised when the bill comes due.
If the kids can realise that money doesn't grow on trees, then why can't the Labor government? The coalition has a record, a decades long record, of responsible economic management and of cleaning up Labor's mess time after time, and we will be able to do that again. It won't be easy and it won't be fun, but it will be necessary.
The government simply cannot continue to put unsustainable spending on the national credit card for future generations to pay back. Australians should know that the coalition will be guided by our values and principles of freedom and choice, of personal responsibility, of aspiration and of enterprise. We commit to restoring fiscal discipline, to rewarding effort, to encouraging business and enterprise, to giving the government focused on targeting what's important to achieve and necessary to achieve not what is nice to have, and to act to deliver for intergenerational fairness, backing a smaller and enabling government, because big government creates small citizens.
Responsible government starts with restraint, and only the coalition has the record and the resolve to deliver that.