Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The fact is that the global financial crisis has blown a $40 billion hole in the surplus and substantially reduced the size of future surpluses. The fact that we are still budgeting for surpluses is because of the hard yards that we did in the last budget. In these uncertain times, Australians should take comfort from the fact that their government is acting decisively here and engaging abroad. When it comes to strengthening the economy in uncertain times and protecting hard working Australians, we will never sit on our hands. We are focused on those things that we can influence and doing what we can to limit the impact of global developments on our financial markets and on our economy.

The opposition leader is a very clever politician who spends all his time telling people what they want to hear— (Time expired)