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

I thank the honourable member for Braddon for his question. He recognises, like the IMF recognises, that we have been left with a significant economic challenge. The IMF report recognises that the government has inherited a significant budgetary problem. Labor left behind $123 billion of deficits and, if no remedial action is taken, $667 billion of debt—a huge amount of money. The fact is: they left us with a growth rate less than three per cent, which is the trend growth rate for Australia. And they left us with rising unemployment. In many ways that is the most devastating of the indices. If Labor were re-elected, unemployment would be going up to 6.25 per cent on their own pre-budget data.

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