Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed. The Leader of the Opposition, which he was then and thankfully still is now, was running around on a 36-hour New South Wales law and order binge, where he was clearly submitting himself as the candidate for premier in the state election. But he did say, 'We have $50 billion in savings up our sleeves, in our gear.' But after the election, when they were forced to demonstrate at least some degree of financial rigour, there was an $11 billion costings black hole. Indeed when we were dealing with the floods package—very necessary to help with the reconstruction of terribly flood affected areas—they said, 'We can find cuts,' and we all know how that descended into farce. The shadow foreign minister told the shadow leader, 'You are not cutting foreign aid,' when in fact the opposition leader was trying to use One Nation's policy on cutting foreign aid. Of course we do not talk about the war now, do we?

Returning to what is most important: I have submitted to this House today what we are doing to tackle cost of living pressures. I have submitted that this is a budget about getting us back into black by 2012-13. This is a budget which is about creating more jobs and spreading the benefits of the mining boom across all of the economy. We are an economy in transition; we need good policies in this country. But the challenge tomorrow night for the opposition is saying, 'If we do not like what you are doing, what is our plan?' The challenge for them is to demonstrate that they will not just keep this economy in deficit, unlike yesterday's capable Swan budget.

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