Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I am sorry; we love the Treasurer. We want him to keep his job. The Australian people have such confidence in the Treasurer that a recent survey, which named 10 people and asked who was best placed to lead the Labor Party, did not even ask whether the Deputy Prime Minister was. Not even the pollster thought that was credible. They had the Leader of the Greens and they had someone from the Liberal Party before they asked whether the Treasurer should be leading the Labor Party. That is what he is reduced to—and this is a man running the Australian economy. He writes an article in the Financial Timessaying there is a 'crisis of confidence in the world'. You know what? I do not get any more confident about the world when Wayne Swan is out there. I do not feel more confident about Australia when the Treasurer gets up and says we are in good shape. This is the man that said the carbon tax would be 'roughly budget neutral'. Budget neutral? It is a $4.2 billion hole in the budget.

They said they would deliver a surplus in this budget, and this was only a few weeks ago. I was sitting over here with my colleagues listening intently to the Treasurer and I refreshed my memory of the budget. In the budget he said this:

We'll be back in the black by 2012-13, on time, as promised.

The alternative—meandering back to surplus—would compound the pressures in our economy and push up the cost of living for pensioners and working people.

We will reach surplus despite company tax is not recovering like our economy.

And he also said:

Our spending restraint means real growth in spending averages 1 per cent …

So he said 'things are tough, but we're going to get the budget back to surplus because that takes the pressure off pensioners and working people'. Well, today the Prime Minister conceded that the budget is not going to get back to surplus in 2012-13, which means the Prime Minister has conceded that Labor, under her, is now going to make life harder for pensioners and working people. This is her own Treasurer; this is the guy that stood up in this place and delivered a budget and now he is saying, 'I'm sorry, we're going to have to dump that promise.' Today of all days is the day: 'We had dumped a promise on the carbon tax and now we dump a promise on a surplus.' All of the indicators have been going for months: before he even stood in this place he was recognising that consumer confidence is down, building approvals are down, credit growth is down—all of those things. It was happening months ago, and yet he stood in this place a few weeks ago and said emphatically, 'We will deliver a surplus in 2012-13, I promise.'

Like his Prime Minister, the Treasurer has broken a promise. If he wonders why the Australian people are not listening to him as Treasurer, if he wonders why people are cocooning, saving money, walking away from taking a risk and walking away from discretionary spending, he should look no further than this simple fact: the Labor Party cannot be trusted. The Prime Minister cannot be trusted. The Treasurer cannot be trusted. They are deceiving the Australian people, and the Australian people will punish them at the next election.

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