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

I thank the member for Robertson for her question. The government is committed to returning the budget to surplus as quickly as possible in the wake of the global financial crisis and, in accordance with that goal, has adopted the objectives of offsetting all new spending and applying a cap of two per cent real increase to government spending from the time when the growth numbers return to trend to the time when the budget returns to surplus. As part of those objectives, the government has commenced the ordinary process of consideration of savings options earlier than normal—in fact, several months earlier than normal—as part of the preparation for the forthcoming budget.

The government are open to considering opposition proposals and community proposals for savings initiatives in this area. We have already made very substantial cuts in spending in specific programs and indeed costs for running government in both the 2008 and the 2009 budgets. We are lectured on an almost daily basis by the opposition about the evils of deficits, the danger of debt, and yet never—not once in the course of this parliament—have we received any specific commitments or proposals from the opposition for savings initiatives that could increase the overall fiscal position, reduce deficit and reduce debt. Underneath all of the rhetoric thus far, we have had virtually nothing in the way of substantive proposals.

I note that the opposition has put in place an expenditure review committee. This was announced with some fanfare on 30 July this year by my opposite number, Senator Coonan, who seemed to be under the impression that perhaps this was the first time an opposition had ever done anything of this kind—if you look at the ABC Radio transcript from when she announced it. Perhaps she has not done any research about what ERCs do and whether there have been ERCs in opposition before, but there certainly were ERCs when Labor was in opposition and those ERCs in fact did develop specific spending cut proposals and put them to the people at the election—

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