Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for McEwen for his question. As members know, Australia came through the global financial crisis and the global recession in better shape than any other major developed economy. Our net debt position is a tiny fraction of what it is in major developed economies and we are getting back into surplus well before all of those. While we were putting in place the policies to avoid recession, we were also putting in place the policies to promote the recovery—both at the same time. Absolutely critical were the strict fiscal rules that we outlined in this House early in 2009—that is, putting in place our two per cent expenditure cap. For example, it is very important in bringing the budget back to surplus, and banking any revenue improvements is also important, but it takes hard work. What that means is that the budget is coming back to surplus in three years, three years early. It means our net debt position is substantially lower than in any other major developed economy at six per cent compared to something like 90 per cent for the other major developed economies. This task and this achievement has been recognised extensively by international agencies. This is what the International Monetary Fund had to say just a couple of weeks ago:

… returning quickly to budget surpluses as the authorities intend will put Australia on firmer footing to deal with future shocks.

Then they go on to say of our fiscal consolidation:

… is faster than past consolidations in Australia and plans in most other advanced economies.

We had Standard and Poor’s make this comment on 24 September:

Australia has one of the strongest fiscal positions globally with a net general government debt burden less than half the level of AAA rated countries.

It has taken a lot of hard work to do this and it takes more than the effort that we have seen from those on the other side with their $10.6 billion costing con job. You cannot just walk in five minutes before midnight, as the shadow Treasurer did and the shadow finance spokesperson did, and expect that you can be credible. What we have seen is that they ignored the advice of the accounting firm. There was no audit of their costings and they got nine dollars out of 10 of their net saves wrong—nine dollars out of 10 absolutely wrong.

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