Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The government is clocking up deficits to the tune of $181 billion. The truth is, what you normally expect of a Treasurer coming into a new job like this is that they'll try to improve the situation. So I looked at the budget ,when I was in the lock-up, thinking, 'Okay, he's going to reduce the deficit; the deficit's going to come down.' But, no! It goes from $32 billion up to $51 billion in 2024-25. How does anyone expect the Reserve Bank to manage interest rates down in an environment where the government is blowing out its spending and blowing out the budget deficits? That is exactly what is going on in this budget.

But they've done something else—very tricky, very sneaky. It took us a little while to find this. They've given up on the notion of budget balance. It's gone. Since 1996, every budget, Labor or Liberal, has always committed in the fiscal strategy to budget balance.

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