Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That was a truly awful speech, but I still think it was bad luck that Senator Lundy was not made a frontbencher in the government. I am sure that her speech-making form will improve in coming months to prove me right. I have heard a lot of wild claims, but few more wild than the claims that I heard today in Senator Lundy’s effort. Let us go back and put a few facts on the table. There is a budget surplus of $22 billion. How did that surplus arrive? It arrived through the very hard work of people like Senator Minchin and Peter Costello. The Labor Party had very little to do with this massive surplus. In fact, given their spending and their capacity to spend, one thing we can say is absolutely certain is that that surplus will continue to erode over the years.

The proposition that somehow this surplus was an outcome of Labor government policy is a complete farce. This surplus is the outcome of policies which were put in place by the Howard and Costello government, during which, I might say, so many tax bills were opposed by the Labor Party.