Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

It is a very good question. You get revenue coming in one side and you pay it out on the other. However, if you are Mr Abbott or Mr Hockey, you just pay it out—you do not worry about the fact that you have no revenue. Meanwhile, what you have not told your backbench is, 'We're actually making the $70 billion hole bigger and we're starting to get a little worried, because by the next election there'll be a whole bunch of cuts to health, to hospitals, to social security and to defence that we're going to have to make because we keep spending money we haven't got.' What we see is Mr Robb excluded from coalition economic meetings. What we see now is coalition backbenchers starting to realise they are spending money they have not got and it is all going to come home to roost.