Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week Essential polling polled Australians' perceptions of politicians. I do not know if it surprised you, Deputy Speaker, but it did not surprise me that 90 per cent of Australians do not hold us in high regard. When today this deal was announced and I was asked to speak on the Excise Tariff Amendment (Fuel Indexation) Bill 2015 and the associated bills, I thought I would come down and have a chat to the House about this legislation, because, in 18 months, this is one of the rare times that I have actually seen bipartisanship. I got here early and I have listened to speeches from the Treasurer, the shadow Treasurer, the member for Grayndler and the member for Perth. And I get why people are not thinking too highly of us at the moment. In a moment of supposed bipartisanship, we have the opposition standing up and rebadging this as a position of their own. I have written down some of the quotes, because I found them quite hard to comprehend. The member for McMahon, when responding to interjections from the Assistant Minister for Defence, said that we had doubled the budget deficit. When the assistant minister rightfully pointed out that their record was not too flash, his response was: 'Forget about that.' In other words: 'From 2007 to 2013, up until PEFO—forget about that.' The problem is we cannot. He went on to say, 'Difficult decisions are needed.' I know that the Assistant Minister for Infrastructure agrees with me on this. We have been trying to make them for 18 to 19 months. Difficult decisions are needed—and take the partisanship out of this. Look at our last four years' budgets, what was proposed and what was delivered. In 2011-12 a budget deficit of $22.6 billion was forecast. The actual was $43.4 billion: double. In 2012-13 the budget forecast was $1.5 billion. The actual was $18.8 billion: out by a factor of about 15. In 2013-14 the proposed was $18 billion; the actual was $48 billion. And in 2014-15 proposed was $17.5 billion and actual $35 billion. We have financial problems in this country. They are structural. And here is a newsflash from a bloke who does not come from a political background to the shadow Treasurer: yes, difficult decisions are needed. At the moment, in the budget-in-reply speech from the Leader of the Opposition, there is a $57 billion black hole in what was said on the night. The shadow foreign minister stood up—

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