QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator DEAN SMITH (Western Australia) (15:56): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today. Unfortunately for Australians, the economic news is all bad. Australia is now tipping into $1 trillion worth of national debt.
Unemployment is now on the rise. Inflation remains outside the RBA's preferred range of two to three per cent. Australians are living with 15 interest rate rises under Labor.
Living standards are falling. And there is no plan from Labor to reverse this economic bad news. It's official.
Australia has now tipped over the $1 trillion mark for national debt. Why should people be alarmed about that? In just 12 months, that represents $27 billion in interest rate payments alone.
What does $27 billion buy you? It could buy you 200,000 nurses. It could buy you 400,000 high-care aged-care places.
It could deliver $1,800 in tax relief to every Australian taxpayer—a trillion dollars' worth of national debt, with $27 billion worth of interest payments in one year alone. Rising levels of national debt, especially when they trip over the $1 trillion mark, are bad news for Australians for two primary reasons. The first reason is that that debt bill shackles young Australians to higher taxes in the future.
Think about that. If you're a young Australian, you should be both alarmed and alert to the fact that we have now tipped over $1 trillion worth of national debt because that is your debt. They are your future tax increases that you and your young families will be responsible for.
There's another reason why we should be concerned about $1 trillion worth of national debt—and growing—and that is that it reduces the fiscal capacity of this country to respond to unforeseen events like global conflicts that interrupt our supply chain or global pandemics which put Australians and Australia's prosperity at risk. There is no way the government can make this $1 trillion national debt story into a good news story.
It is all bad and it's particularly bad for young Australians. But there is an alternative that will fix the economy and protect our way of life. There's an alternative for lower taxes, a plan for cheaper power, a plan for less migration and more homes and a plan to put Australians first.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Smith, please don't use props in the chamber. Senator DEAN SMITH: That plan to fix the economy, to protect our way of life, is a plan that will pay down Labor's trillion dollars worth of national debt. It's a plan that puts Australians first.
It's a plan that gives a future brighter than the one that Labor offers to young Australians. It's a plan that gets this country back in shape. It's a plan led by Angus Taylor and the coalition—in contrast to Labor, who have no plan.
Labor's plan, unfortunately, is rising levels of inflation, rising levels of unemployment, rising interest rates— (Time expired)