Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I may not be the world’s best finance minister, but I am proud of the role I have played in the last six years in ensuring that this is one of the very few countries in the Western world that is debt free, one of the very few countries in the Western world operating in surplus, quite unlike the state Labor governments which are now all, but for the case of Western Australia, going into deficit. If you want to see mismanagement of taxpayers’ funds, have a look at what the last two federal Labor governments did in destroying the fiscal position of the Commonwealth; have a look at what state Labor governments did in the late eighties and early nineties. It destroyed the state of South Australia, my own state, as well as Victoria and Western Australia. And now we are about to see it all over again, despite the fact that the economy has been growing for 16 years and is incredibly strong and that the states now have the advantage, as a result of our reforms, opposed by the Labor Party, of the growth tax which they have always wanted: the goods and services tax.