Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Clearly, Senator Joyce continues to struggle to read the financial statements, which is worrying for a former accountant. As has been made clear, not only are we repaying the debt early, but we have met the commitments which we made, which were to fully offset all new spending. Sure, we have invested heavily in health and heavily in skills, because those are the priorities for the economy, but we have offset all new spending so that we can bring down the debt quickly. We have held real spending growth to less than two per cent a year when the economy is growing above trend. We have saved and not spent recovering revenues. That will allow us to return the budget back to surplus sooner. So we have invested new money in things like health and schools, which are priorities, but we have fully offset all new spending with savings and this has allowed us to bring the economy— (Time expired)