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

When I was in year 8 at school, Father Lake Smith used to come into religion classes and say, 'Okay boys, we want you to read the acts of the apostles.' I remember reading about this fellow called Saul—or Paul the Apostle—who travelled to Damascus in order to try to capture, imprison and potentially execute people who were following Jesus. And, of course, on the way he had a conversion.

My father, who was born in Bethlehem, told me: 'You usually get quite a few people walking that great road to Damascus as Christmas approaches.' And as Christmas approaches I hear Wayne Swan talking about a surplus. I hear the Treasurer talking about savings. I hear the Treasurer talking about reducing expenditure. On that well-travelled road to Damascus we now have a new trekker who has come down from the mountain and found in his heart that, yes indeed, if you reduce government expenditure you can take upward pressure off interest rates, you can ease the upward pressure on the Australian dollar, you can take some pressure off inflation from imports and, goodness me, do you know what? When the world is in trouble with too much debt the solution might just be to start reducing government debt.

An opposition member: Epiphany!

It is. The light shines. The path to Damascus is well trodden. Now we have a Treasurer who has found religion, except he won't tell us exactly what it is. He won't explain exactly what it is because he briefed Laura Tingle—someone who obviously is not very fond of our side of politics—that this was going to be a major economic statement dealing with a crisis. In fact, it would be mini budget.

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