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

The government are determined to return the budget to surplus and we will lay out our plans, we will lay out our policies—how we are funding them, how we have costed them—in the budget, just as we did in the—

Senator Cormann interjecting—

If I may say, Senator Cormann is demonstrating his glass jaw to everyone far and wide. What a glass jaw over there. But anyway, we will return to this. The government have made clear it is our position, our determination, to return the budget to surplus and what we will do is put this—

Honourable senators interjecting—

But on the other side we have weeks of infighting, complete confusion and contradictory statements being made by their economic team. As Senator Sinodinos reminded us all this morning, there has been some untidiness from the coalition on returning the budget to surplus. He calls it untidy—well, a $9 billion deficit in 2012-13 is pretty untidy. (Time expired)