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

I can do it again! The coalition is building a stronger Australian economy. The coalition is helping to build a stronger Tasmanian economy. We are doing so by getting on with the job of delivering the economic reforms so necessary to fix up the mess that was left by Labor. My state colleagues in Tasmania have a similar challenge. They are releasing their budget, I think, today, and it is dealing with another mess left by the Labor Party and the Greens.

Of course, it all starts with a budget. Labor's legacy here at a national level was to leave $123 billion of deficits, to leave us with a monthly debt interest bill of $1 billion, 70 per cent of which we have to pay to people living overseas because that is who we borrow the money from. Australians have to borrow money from people overseas because we do not self-fund our own economy. When the federal government runs a deficit, it has to borrow money, and a huge chunk of that comes from people living overseas, so the interest goes back to those people living overseas. Unless we take corrective action now on the budget and unless we make the decisions now—urged on by the Governor of the Reserve Bank; the Secretary of Treasury; Moody's; Standard and Poor's; the IMF; the OECD, the Parliamentary Budget Office, and just about every economist in the country—and get on with the job of fixing the budget now then the pain for everyday Australians in the future will be far greater. In fact, it will work out at an interest bill of $3 billion a month within 10 years—$3 billion a month! There will be $667 billion of debt in 10 years unless we take action now. And our budget is about taking action now. Only the Labor Party could possibly be in denial about that—the Labor Party that caused the mess; the Labor Party that did not flinch as unemployment surged past 6 per cent; the Labor Party that did not flinch at $123 billion of excess; the Labor Party that did not flinch about lying to the Australian people about delivering a surplus—

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

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