Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I remind the Prime Minister that every time the government has increased the government credit card limit since it came to office—from $75 billion to $200 billion to $250 billion and, most recently, to $300 billion—it has fully utilised the increase. I ask the Prime Minister: will she now rule out trying to increase the nation's credit card limit above $300 billion in the May budget?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the Leader of the Opposition that the thing called the global financial crisis happened. I remind the Leader of the Opposition, who knows nothing about economics, that we have just lived through the single-biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. And I remind the Leader of the Opposition that in the circumstances of that economic crisis this nation faced a choice. You could see that crisis enveloping the world and you could decide that you were going to cut and cut and cut and cut and cut your budget. In order to do so you would have needed to do something like stop all payments to age pensioners or stop all payments for Medicare. Yes, you could have chosen to do that, and if you had done that then our economy would have catapulted into recession and hundreds of thousands of people would have been put out of work, and the future for young Australians wanting to be apprentices would have been destroyed forever. Instead of taking that reckless, irresponsible approach that developed nations around the world did not take—no developed nation around the world, not President Obama and not Prime Minister Cameron followed that prescription that the Leader of the Opposition apparently believes in.

As a result of that, the government did sustain some debt, and we chose to do that to stimulate the economy. We are now living in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, where company revenue, corporate revenue to the government—indeed, revenue generally—has not returned to the levels that were predicted by our Treasury. Indeed, per unit of GDP, we are seeing less revenue to the government than at any time since the recovery from the 1990s recession. In those circumstances you have another choice: do you cut and cut and cut because of those revenue reductions, throwing people out of work, jeopardising growth in our economy? Is that what you do? Or do you pursue the strategy of the government, which is jobs and growth as well as a prudent budget position?

The Leader of the Opposition might well say that his economic strategy would be to cut and cut and cut and cut. Well, if that is his economic strategy he should have the decency to tell the Australian people who those cuts would fall on, how hard they would hit schools, hit hospitals, hit family payments, hit pensioners and hit defence. He has an obligation to specify that. Instead, he comes in here with these statements that just show he has no understanding of the modern economy and that his only approach to issues of economic management is continued negativity and risk. (Time expired)

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Speaker, I ask a supplementary question. Given that government revenue has actually increased by 7.7 per cent this financial year, why is the Prime Minister now planning to raise the government's credit card limit above $300 billion?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I refer the Leader of the Opposition to the budget estimates. I refer him to the estimates in the budget in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would think it is not appropriate for those opposite to be starting to interject on that statement. We know they always want to insult a public servant when it comes to these debates. But I would refer the Leader of the Opposition to those documents.

Mr Pyne interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business is warned.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In those documents, forecasts are prepared by the same professional public servants who assisted the Howard government and who should not have abuse heaped on their heads. I refer the Leader of the Opposition to those estimates and to the underperformance of revenue against those estimates. If he has a strategy to cut in order to meet that shortfall in revenue between what was projected and what has been received then he should detail it: tell people where the health cuts are going, tell them where the education cuts are going—

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Speaker, a point of order: I asked a very simple, straightforward question, without any criticism of the government, and under the direct relevance rule the Prime Minister should simply, clearly and—

Government members interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not needing the assistance, thank you. The Prime Minister has the call.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition should have the decency to tell people where the cuts will fall, how many people will lose their jobs—how many thousands of them, how many tens of thousands of them will lose their jobs—because apparently the economic policy of the Leader of the Opposition is to match the downgrades in the revenue being received by government with cuts. Well, who is going to get hurt? Australian families have a right to know. Who is going to lose their jobs? Australian workers have a right to know. Get up and detail that.