If those opposite want to talk spending, let's talk spending, and let's get some facts on the table. When we came to government, we inherited $900 billion in debt, and 70 per cent of that debt was accrued by those opposite. Let's get those facts on the table while we talk spending.

I want to make it interesting for everyone in the chamber today; I'm going to add a bit of a backing track to my speech. Just have playing in the back of your head Shirley Bassey's 'Big Spender'. That is the song that comes to mind whenever Australians hear lecturing from those opposite about fiscal discipline. Have you got the tune in your head? I hope you've got it in there, because I'm going to take you through the five greatest hits of wasteful spending by those opposite.

Let's start with No. 5, car park rorts. Six hundred and sixty million dollars was spent on car parks, some of which were never even delivered. The Auditor-General said it was not transparent and not based on need—a terrible waste of money.

Now we move on to No. 4, French submarines. How could we forget! Prime Minister Turnbull signed the deal, then Prime Minister Morrison cancelled the deal—$2.4 billion in taxpayer money spent, with not a single submarine as a result. In fact, it ruined our relationship with the French, with the French president openly calling the former prime minister a liar.

We go to No. 3. This one was a doozy—the NBN redesign. Abbott ripped up the original plan. He promised cheaper, faster internet. Instead, Australians got slower speeds and we got a massive cost blowout—$27 billion wasted.

We're moving into some really wasteful spending now. No. 2 is JobKeeper design failures. It was a great idea. We supported JobKeeper; it's important to keep and support Australian workers. But the design flaws were enormous. In fact, those opposite gave $13 billion to profitable companies, companies whose revenue went up during the COVID pandemic because there were no clawback provisions.

Okay, we're going to go to No. 1. Are you ready for it? No. 1 for most wasteful spending is robodebt. It's the worst of the lot because, let's remember, the original intent of that policy was to save us money. It was supposed to save us $1.5 billion. What did it do? It ended up costing us money—$1.8 billion. I cannot think of a worse policy. It was unlawful, it ruined thousands of lives, and it ended up costing us money. So let's have a debate about spending. I'm ready to do it. It's important that we get the facts about what those opposite achieved on the record. We inherited that mess. We inherited that wasteful spending, that debt, and we also inherited their inflation challenge. It started under them at more than six per cent.

Let's move into part 2 of this speech. I'm going to give you a new song here—'Takin' Care of Business'. Have you got that in the back of your head? We are facing some real challenges. Inflation is higher than we would hope, it is sticking around longer than we would hope, and higher oil prices are adding to that. This conflict cannot end soon enough. We acknowledge that inflation is presenting difficulties and challenges to households. High interest rates are challenging. They're seeing it at the supermarket check-out. They're seeing it at the petrol bowser. We acknowledge that. But what we have done as a government, in every single budget, is find savings measures, and that has meant $180 billion in savings, which has meant we have avoided $70 billion in interest costs. We've delivered back-to-back surpluses. Were those opposite ever able to ever do that? Were they ever able to deliver just one surplus in their time in government? Never. We've made difficult decisions to make sure that we can make our budget sustainable.