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

As a result, we are getting on with our agenda. If nothing had been done about the budget, we would have been facing $123 billion of deficits over the four years. We would be facing $667 billion of debt over a 10-year period. That is $25,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in Australia. I will tell you what is unfair: Labor's legacy of $25,000 of debt for every man, woman and child is unfair. I will tell you what is unfair: $1 billion a month in interest, just on the debt that Labor left behind. Seventy per cent of it goes overseas to repay the money to people that we borrowed from. I will tell you what is unfair—that that we leave Australians with a lesser quality of life in the future than that which we have had. When you borrow money today, you are borrowing from the future. The money must be repaid, in principal and interest, into the future. What have we done? We have started by identifying the mess that was left behind. They left behind record deficits and record debt. They left behind 93 announced but unlegislated taxation changes and we are fixing that. They left behind unfulfilled agreements on trade with Korea and Japan, and there was China as well. We have delivered two of the three, with one yet to come—a great credit to the minister for trade.

We said we would end the age of entitlement, starting with corporate Australia, and we have done that. We know it is not painless. We know that. But we have delivered, and it took enormous courage. We stood up to people because it is the right thing to do. Whether it is an industry or whether it is a business, we cannot take money from the battlers of Australia paying tax and give it to corporate Australia. We cannot do that. We said we would clean up the mess in taxation that Labor left. We got rid of the carbon tax for pensioners and middle Australia—$550 per household per year. It is a burden lifted off manufacturing, and a burden lifted off exports. We said we would get rid of it, and we got rid of it. We said we would get rid of the mining tax and associated expenditure. Every day during the last election Labor kept saying, 'show us your costings.' We did show them the costings, and we provided in detail every single bit of the abolition of the mining tax package. We gave every single detail in full, and Labor did not like it. We had the guts to go to the election and give the people the facts, and the electorate voted for us, just as they voted for us to get on with the job of fixing the economy.

There were $800 billion of approvals for projects held up under Labor, and we have gone on and done the job with those. We are also getting rid of red tape—$800 million a year in red-tape burden on business. We have got rid of that as well. We are getting on with the job of strengthening the Australian economy. We are building the infrastructure of the 21st century. We are laying down plans and delivering on $125 billion of new infrastructure for Australia. We are creating tens of thousands of new jobs, because ultimately it comes down to jobs. Under the former minister for workplace relations, Job Creation Australia was tracking at 5,000 new jobs a month. Under us that figure is 15,000 new jobs a month. Under us, even Labor economists like Stephen Koukoulas recognise that business expectations are at decade highs, that business confidence is at highs and that consumer confidence is back to highs. The bottom line is that we are building a stronger economy. We are building a stronger budget. We are determined to build a stronger Australia. I say to the Labor Party: you are irrelevant; you have put yourselves in that place—don't blame anyone other than yourselves for your own political and policy incompetence.

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