STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr SMALL (Forrest—Opposition Whip) (13:51): We know that the Australian Treasurer has a serious spending problem, because not only is spending at a 40-year high outside of the pandemic, not only has the RBA governor no less admitted that public spending is driving inflation, but, of course, recently debt ticked over one trillion dollars. And still this megalomaniac of a Treasurer won't accept that he's got to stop the spendathon.

The Treasurer can spin with his arts degree, but it doesn't change the facts, and the facts are that Australians are worse off under this government than they were four years ago. They are quite literally poorer today. This government has received billions of dollars from resource and inflation windfalls, but they haven't saved a dime of it.

Instead of paying down the debt and investing in our nation's future, they have blown the lot. The coalition has a plan to dig, drill and pay down the debt bill. We'll establish a future generations fund so that when windfall resource taxes come in above forecast, 80c of every dollar will be banked for our nation, banked to help pay down Labor's trillion-dollar debt and banked to build the infrastructure that our nation depends on.

Importantly, 25 per cent of that funding will be reserved for regional areas like mine that fuel, feed and power our nation because Australia is worth fighting for.