Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party do not want to hear about the mortgage. They do not want to hear about the debt. All they want to hear about is the spend, spend, because that has been the history in this country. You had Prime Minister Whitlam, and then Fraser had to fix it up. You had Hawke and Keating messing up the economy, and then Howard had to fix it up. Of course, what will happen here very, very soon is that Mr Rudd will have mucked up the economy, and Mr Turnbull and the Liberal-National parties will have to clean up the mess. Let us not forget that 21 April 2006 was ‘debt-free day’ for Australia. That is how long it took us to pay off the debt—21 April 2006; that was ‘debt-free day’. It has only taken a very short period of time for the Rudd government to want to legislate for $200 billion worth of debt.

So I say to Senator Fielding, I say to Senator Xenophon and I say to the Australian Greens: you might get some support in the polls today, tomorrow—and the Labor Party—and we accept—