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

I just want to deal head-on with this great fiction. The Labor Party's record was $190 billion of deficits in five years. I know that the member for Lilley is hurting about that, because he promised there would be a surplus. In fact, they all promised there would be a surplus. There was no surplus. There is no surplus. In fact, the legacy of Labor is that over the next 10 years there is no surplus, there is no repayment of debt. So, as you can see, the Labor party legacy of debt and deficit was not just for the period they were in government; it is for as far as you can see in the years ahead—$667 billion dollars

Labor's legacy out of all of that—which they are in denial about—is that they left an economic environment with deteriorating terms of trade, with rising unemployment, and with below trend growth. Labor's legacy was 200,000 more Australians unemployed between the time they went into government and the time they left government.

Labor's legacy in relation to economic reform was to impose more regulation on Australian businesses. In fact Labor introduced 22,000 new regulations in just five years—and there is no sense of embarrassment.

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

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