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

I hate to enlighten the Leader of the Opposition but the private health insurance rebate is in fact a spending item, and that is the example I cited that is being blocked in the Senate because the Leader of the Opposition wants to keep his private health insurance rebate so that ordinary working people who pay the taxes to finance his private health insurance subsidy will keep paying those taxes. The opposition is totally, massively, chronically confused on fiscal policy. It says it would have a lower deficit, that it would have lower debt, yet it makes promises of more spending, it blocks the government’s savings initiatives in the Senate and it has yet to put forward a single savings initiative of its own.

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