Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow Treasurer for his question. I agree with him that Australians do deserve a Treasurer with a steady hand, and they have one. They have a Treasurer who has delivered a budget that will return the budget to surplus in 2012-13 exactly as promised. When they look at the alternative, the shadow Treasurer, all of his claims, all of his mindless negativity, lands in a bundle at his feet tonight, because he has been wandering around saying that he could get the budget into surplus a year earlier than the government. So, if he is truly concerned about questions of debt and deficit, what he well knows is that to deal with debt and deficit you need to have a plan that gets the budget into surplus. We do.

Now tonight is the opportunity for the shadow Treasurer to give the Leader of the Opposition a page of figures which explains his plan to get the budget into surplus 12 months earlier. We await that plan. What we know about the shadow Treasurer is that he has been alongside the Leader of the Opposition in some shameful, farcical exercises when it comes to trying to put figures together. We remember their flood funding package farce earlier this year, when they said to the government: 'Gee, we could get all of this together. It'd be easy. It'd be easy to find billions of dollars of savings to rebuild the nation. We wouldn't need a flood levy,' they said. 'We'll produce the figures.' When they produced the figures they degenerated into a week of internal chaos. Because they were so desperate for savings, they snatched up a One Nation email. We remember the election campaign when presumably the shadow Treasurer was involved with the Leader of the Opposition in generating their so-called costings for the election? We remember the $11 billion black hole the shadow Treasurer was no doubt—

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