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

I thank the honourable member for Reid for question and note that he is asking a question about the details of the budget—and we welcome that. As someone who has worked in business and has been at the coalface of business activity, particularly in Western Sydney, he knows how important it is for the country to live within its means, as it is important for business and individuals to live within their means. Of course, under the trajectory that we inherited, of deficit and debt under Labor, we were facing $667 billion of debt within a decade. That is $25,000 for every man, woman and child in debt—government debt—in a decade's time, and we would be paying $3 billion a month interest—70 of which would be going overseas. Just as we are paying a billion dollars a month interest now on the debt that Labor accrued, we now send $700 million of that each month to people overseas that we had borrowed money from. So it is money that leaves Australia every month.

There is no sense of regret or even a sense of apology from our political opponents about this. The member for Lilley said that it was a 'ruinous' budget situation. In a moment of clarity in his discussions with Bob Carr he said the state of the budget 'is ruinous'. But, of course, now that they are in opposition they deny any responsibility. And no-one does that more than the member for Watson, who went out again this morning and said: 'We had to keep within our two per cent cap on spending growth that we put in place.'

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