My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to his statement the day before the last election when he described himself as an economic conservative and said:

Economic conservative means a fundamental belief in budget surpluses. And you go back to my experience in this respect. I worked at a senior level in the Goss government in Queensland in the first half of the 90s.

When national economic circumstances were difficult, when there wasn’t a lot of money flowing into the economy particularly, there wasn’t the presence of a global resources boom, and budget after budget, we produced budget surpluses.

Does the Prime Minister now regret saying that to the Australian people?