Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (16:02): When I first came to this place I hoped, perhaps naively, that on issues that would affect the future of my children and, in time, perhaps my grandchildren, there would be at least an attempt at some level of bipartisanship. The extraordinary disappointment for me has been that there has not even been an attempt in this case. In what is one of the most important pieces of work that our public servants, our independent public servants, do, there has been no attempt by the other side at any level of bipartisanship before they have even read the report. So, it is time to actually look at the Australia we are going to leave our children and grandchildren if we continue with the policies that we inherited. That is the starting point. You cannot think about the future without understanding the starting point.

Let us look at a few of the facts. Australian government spending, as it was, was on its way to 37 per cent of GDP. Almost 40 per cent of the economy was federal government spending. That is great if you are a socialist, because you have taken it from 22 per cent to 37 per cent, and no doubt in time you are on your way to 100 per cent. We as a government have already got that down to 30 per cent. You have to ask yourself: what was it about Labor policies that were pushing that number up to 37 per cent, and the answer is very simple. They allowed spending growth to be faster than GDP. It is that simple. If you do that, then away it goes, away it rips.

When we look at net debt it was $6 trillion and 122 per cent of GDP. As we heard earlier from the member for Kooyong, this is an extraordinary number compared to other countries in the world. In fact Austria, which has not been one of the world's best on this front, is at 53 per cent at the moment. Canada is at only 35 per cent. New Zealand is at 26 per cent. The UK, which has been a real problem area, is at 82 per cent. The US is at 87 per cent. But, of course, we were on our way towards Greece at 155 per cent and Ireland at 102 per cent. That is where the Labor policies were taking us, because they could not contain spending growth, because they were locking in spending growth greater than GDP.

When we look at deficits they were taking us to 12 per cent of GDP. That is over $600 billion a year. Let us do a few more comparisons. I looked at the 2015 forecast and the 2014 actuals. The interesting thing about that is that I could not find a deficit in the OECD that got to 12 per cent of GDP. There was not one there. In fact I had to go back in history to 2009 to find some deficits that approached 12 per cent of GDP. I managed to find Greece at 15.6 per cent, Portugal at 10 per cent, Spain at 11 per cent and the United States at 12 per cent. We would be as bad as the worst countries during the GFC on the policies that Labor left us.

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to have a look at how you might fix this problem. My starting point, of course, was to look for the money tree. I could not find the money tree in Hotham. I had a look at Newcastle, and Scullin, and Wakefield, and McMahon, and then I thought: I know where the money tree is. The money tree must be in Lilley because the member for Lilley promised us three surpluses, which he never delivered. Then I suddenly realised where the money tree was. The money tree was the next generation of Australians.

In fact I did some very simple calculations of how much tax the next generation of Australians would be paying to pay for these deficits, and that was very interesting. Let us put this in perspective. The GST today generates 3.6 per cent. If we quadrupled the GST, the 40 per cent GST rate would be Labor's money tree. The personal income tax generates 11½ per cent. If we double the personal income tax rate that would be the money tree. It is clear that Labor's policies were to tax more, to take us down the path of debt and deficit and to leave extraordinary liabilities for the next generation of Australians