Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Today senior Australian Financial Review journalist Laura Tingle described the Prime Minister's budget strategy as 'dead, a seriously ex-parrot'. Does the Prime Minister agree that his budget strategy and unfair GP tax are dead? Or, Prime Minister, is it just a flesh wound?

Ms Hall interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Shortland will leave under 94(a).

The member for Shortland then left the chamber.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take the opportunity of this moment at the dispatch box to say that I have full confidence in the Minister for Defence. I will say this of the Minister for Defence: he wants to be the minister. He is doing a fine job as the minister. If you look at the outcomes under members opposite, Labor had three defence ministers in six years. Their first defence minister was sacked, their second defence minister resigned and their third defence minister wanted another job. That is what Labor defence ministers were like.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Prime Minister had three questions on which he could have expressed confidence in the minister, but he is not being relevant on this one.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. If you want to call a point of order, there is a proper way to do it and you know very well there is. One more breach of the standing order protocols and you will leave too.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The point I am making is that the idea that this fine minister should somehow be disqualified from serving simply because of a mistake made in the heat of the moment is simply absurd.

On the question of the budget, our budget strategy is simple. It is to get the budget back to surplus as quickly as we can and as responsibly as we can. Members opposite know that that is the right strategy because we had statement after statement from members opposite saying that we needed, to quote the Leader of the Opposition, 'a budget surplus for a strong economy'. They all know that a budget surplus matters. The problem is that they never delivered it. In the famous statement of the member for Lilley, he said: 'The four years of surpluses that I announce tonight.' He announced that in 2012. Labor has not delivered a surplus since 1989. On the form that members opposite show, Labor is simply congenitally incapable of delivering a surplus.

We heard the Leader of the Opposition on radio the other day. He said:

… we're more likely to get back to surplus under a Labor government than this current mob.

Really? They have opposed every savings measure. This Leader of the Opposition has opposed every savings measure, including his own. He is not trying to create a budget surplus; he is trying to sabotage a budget surplus. He says he wants a budget surplus, but he is not prepared to support a single measure designed to deliver it. This is a Labor Party that have absolutely given up on governing or even pretending to govern this country. They were incompetent in government. They are wreckers in opposition. They are the budget saboteurs par excellence.