Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the member for Rankin's earlier question. The member for Rankin has asked a succession of questions and complained about them not being answered, so I will work through them in order.

There are a lot of members of parliament who used to work for Peter Costello in this place, and they very proudly walk around this House speaking fondly of their experiences working for the greatest Treasurer that we have seen in a generation. It is quite extraordinary that the member for Rankin walks around as 'the brain of Wayne Swan'—and he takes that as a compliment!

Dr Chalmers interjecting—

I am glad that you take that as a compliment. I can assure the member for Rankin that it is not a meant as a compliment but, if you take it that way, congratulations.

In relation to the debt limit, which the member has referred to, just a bit of history: in December 2013 the former Treasurer directed that the debt limit would be $500 billion. On 9 May this year, on budget night, the Treasurer directed the debt limit would be increased to $600 billion. Gross debt subject to the Treasurer's direction, as at last Friday, 9 June, was $496.7 billion, and total gross debt, some of which is not subject to the Treasurer's direction, is $499.2 billion. This is where the member for Rankin and I agree. That is a truckload of debt. It is an absolutely extraordinary amount of debt, and he should hang his head in shame for being the man who set the debt bonfire alight.

Since being in opposition, since being rewarded for being the former Treasurer's brain—which he takes as a compliment, so I will keep saying it, because, if he takes it as a compliment, then surely he is happy with it. They set the debt bonfire alight and since then have done everything possible—every obstructionist tactic—to make the debt worse. Why? I suspect it is because the modern Labor Party is unable to say no to any new spending initiatives.

We saw when we came to government that the forward estimates were laden with hidden time bombs, presumably thought up by the member for Rankin as a bit of a way to ensure that it was very difficult to repair the damage of six years of Labor mismanagement in the fiscal space. Whether that was in unrealistic funding to the states, whether it was underfunding the NDIS or whether it was underfunding a whole host of programs, we know, and I can assure the member for Rankin that the Australian people know, that the Labor Party are the ones who have created this mess, and we are toiling every single day, making very hard choices and difficult decisions, to reduce it. The rate of growth of debt has slowed significantly—again, at a time when our terms of trade were nothing like what the Labor party had when iron ore prices were well north of $100. Now, with an iron ore price lower than $50, we are seeing improvements in the budget bottom line.

So we will not take any lectures from the Labor Party, particularly given that, on the eve of the last election, they accepted a whole host of savings measures that they had criticised up hill and down dale. They accepted them for the purposes of their own budget assumptions. But, notwithstanding the fact that they caved on all of those things, they still went to the election promising to borrow an additional $16 billion. So, whatever the number is today that the member for Rankin complains about, you can add the Labor Party's $16 billion, plus all of the unfunded promises that have been made since the election. So I think it would be much closer to $30 billion or $40 billion on a hypothecated basis. So to the member for Rankin I would say: if $500 billion is very troubling for you then you must be much more concerned about $520 billion, $530 billion or $540 billion, which would be the alternative case should the Labor Party have been in government. But you are not in government. You lost the election, and you lost the election for a very good reason.

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