Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

The government has put in place a savings strategy which is designed to ensure that the budget gets back to surplus by 2015-16 in the wake of the massive loss of revenue that has arrived as a result of the global financial crisis and the global recession. Mr Speaker, as you would recall, that is approximately $210 billion. But the government did put in place a number of savings initiatives in the last budget which were all designed to, over the medium term, improve the fiscal situation for, amongst other reasons, the purpose of avoiding having the fiscal position put upward pressure on interest rates. Unfortunately some of these initiatives have been blocked by the opposition in the Senate. I find it rather extraordinary that the Leader of the Opposition would stand up here and ask for details of the government’s fiscal strategy to ensure that we have savings and put downward pressure on interest rates when one of the major obstacles to achieving these ambitions is the opposition itself. With respect to the reform of the private health insurance rebate, for example, and other health initiatives that are designed to reduce the total spend on these areas in order to improve the fiscal position, it is the opposition, in the Senate, that is blocking these savings. It is characteristically part of the opposition’s stance that, on the one hand, it says that it will deliver a smaller deficit—

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