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

We need to move now—and I thank the member for Boothby for his question. He would remember the 1996 budget. He was there with us, with a number of other members. The fact was that it was similar in one sense: a coalition government is elected; Labor do not tell the full story about what the budget is. Of course, in those days, it was a $96 billion debt and a $10 billion black hole—the Beazley black hole. But this time around Labor have exceeded their record. On this occasion, it is $667 billion of debt and $123 billion of deficits. And the Labor Party hold their hands in the air and say: 'No train crash here. There's no problem here.' The debt is going up. The deficits are continuing endlessly—'There's no problem here.' Unemployment is rising. 'There's no problem here, everything is okay, we did a fabulous job,' they convince themselves.

The problem is that someone has to pick up the bill. And do you know who has to pick up the bill? The taxpayers of Australia have to pick up the bill. They are the ones who are going to have to pay for the reckless indifference of the Labor Party towards taxpayers' money—$667 billion of debt. In the budget this year, through our decisions, we reduced that by almost $300 billion. In 10 years that represents interest savings alone of $16 billion a year. That is the equivalent of building 15 new teaching hospitals every year. And the Labor Party want to have their way. The Labor Party want that $16 billion a year not to go into some other purpose that is going to build a stronger nation. They want us to provide that money as interest to people that we have borrowed the money from. That is their idea of a priority. Our priority is to have a nation that lives within its means. Our priority is to pay our bills as we go along. Our priority is to leave the Australian people with a better quality of life—

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

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