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

That is a cracker of a question from the member for Page—a real cracker. He is absolutely right. We are cleaning up the mess left by Labor and we are determined to do it both on the economy and on the budget, because if you have a strong budget you can also have a strong economy. There was some good news today. According to CommSec, retail trade is at a 12-year high, and I quote: 'Retail trade rose by 0.1 per cent in August after a 0.4 per cent rise in July. Over the past 12 months retail sales grew by 7.4 per cent, marking the best rolling 12-month period since January 2002.' So we welcome good news and a continuation of the good news—the best 12-month period since 2002. And that is on the back of the fact that now Australian businesses, this year under the coalition government, are creating jobs at six times the speed that occurred each month under Labor last year. Nearly 30,000 jobs a month were created in Australia—that is welcomed as well.

Now we are getting on with fixing Labor's mess in the budget. They left a budget debt trajectory of $667 billion. If nothing was done about the legacy of Labor, every single Australian in 10 years would have $25,000 of government debt against their name. Every child born would have $25,000 on their day of birth against their name as a result of what Labor left.

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