Ignore the rent seekers: Leyonhjelm

Governments should stop listening to whingers demanding money, Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm believes.

"Tweeters, rent seekers, greedy people making claims about social justice and corporate beggars in suits" should all be ignored because no amount of generosity will stop them complaining, he says.

Delivering his budget reply speech in the upper house on Thursday, Senator Leyonhjelm said he was standing up for millions of silent, hard-working Australians "who have been taxed up to their eyeballs".

He said tax collected by governments should be spent in the same way it would if those workers were handing it out voluntarily.

The money should not go on welfare for people who are not poor, child care subsidies for high-income families and social engineering like the federal government's school chaplaincy program.

"The only truly legitimate expectations of governments should be to provide a sound legal system, personal and property security and a safety net for the genuinely disadvantaged," the senator said.

Instead, governments are taking millions from workers and giving it back as handouts and then spending millions on "spin doctors" to tell Australians why that's a good thing.

"If you were to listen to the squarkers and the bleaters, you might believe that at all stages of our life cycle we are dependent on government," he said.

By their nature, hard-working Australians are not whingers because they focus on their jobs, Senator Leyonhjelm says.

"On their behalf, I am here to say: enough."