Mr HOCKEY (North Sydney—The Treasurer) (14:18): I thank the honourable member for her question. It is so important that we ask Australians to contribute now. We do so because—and I understand this is an old Irish saying—you fix the roof while the sun is shining. In this case we have $667 billion of debt. If we do not start the process now of trying to ensure that we never get to that level, then the pain associated with dealing with it in a few years time is going to be far greater. We have been very up-front with the Australian people in asking them to pay a temporary budget repair levy on incomes above $180,000. We believe it is only fair that everyone contribute. It is also the case that we are asking Australians to pay for indexation in their fuel excise and, if they contribute that excise, in law we are going to hypothecate it to road funding which is going to substantially increase into the future. In fact, in this budget we are spending well in excess of an additional $11 billion on roads, and the total excise increase would be the equivalent of just over $2 billion. Mr Husic interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Chifley will desist! Mr HOCKEY: There is something that we understand that I am afraid our political opponents do not—that is, if you want to spend money today, you should raise the money today. If you want to spend the money today, you should do everything you can to raise the money today. One of the challenges is that our political opponents did not do that. They spent in excess of $14 billion out of assumed revenue from the mining tax that raised hardly any money. So what happens? The government goes and borrows from the next generation in order to pay for handouts like the schoolkids bonus. Labor is still defending those sort of things even though we have to borrow money to pay for them. They do not understand. If you want to be responsible, and if you want to be responsible across the generations, it is the duty of everyone here to ensure that when we spend money we raise money and we do not go down the path of continuing to borrow money that at the end of the day our children are going to have to repay.