Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Casey for his question and note that he was there the last time we came into government and inherited a budgetary mess from Labor. It is like groundhog day, in a sense, except the problem seems to be worse. The fact is that Labor have left us, according to the IMF survey of 17 nations, with the highest projected spending of the top 17 nations in the world over the next few years. They have left us with the third highest projected growth in net debt of those 17 nations over the next few years. That is a great Labor legacy, apart from the $123 billion of deficit and $667 billion of debt. The fact is that Labor has left the Australian government without any chance of a surplus at all—ever—over the next 10 years. That is their great legacy.

In leaving that massive log jam of increased expenditure, without the revenue available to deal with it, they have left us to make the hard decisions in relation to the budget and we will because we must. The fact is that Labor has deluded itself for a number of years and its legacy of economic incompetence, its legacy of largesse and its legacy of deficit and debt comes at a cost to the economy. The only way you can fix the economy is to start by fixing the budget. That is the only way you can do it. There are no choices here. Labor can cry all it wants about the Commission of Audit. They should know the answers because they created the problems.

They created the problems when it comes to blow-outs in expenditure in health, in education and in social services more generally. They pushed beyond the forward estimates massive increases in defence expenditure, in foreign aid and in a range of other things, but they do not care because Labor does not care about the future. Their disregard for the future is best illustrated by the fact that they have left future generations of Australians with $667 billion of debt. It is contemporary, because in the Senate right now Labor is opposing $20 billion of savings that will start to fix the budget. They announced $5 billion of those savings themselves. So they are not only not true to their principles but they are living hypocrites when it comes to the budget.

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