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

and we took $16.4 billion—Senator Abetz says it is because we are borrowing. It is because less tax is being generated, senator. It is because less tax is being paid to the government. If you would like to look at the tax-to-GDP ratio, it is 23.7 per cent for your government and just over 22 per cent for our government in this year. What is occurring is that for various reasons—including the thing they keep forgetting, which is the worst global downturn since the Great Depression—we are seeing less tax being paid to the federal government under this government than we saw under the Howard government. In fact, in these circumstances the government took some $16.4 billion worth of savings in the MYEFO. That adds to more than $130 billion of savings over five budgets. That level of savings demonstrates the commitment that this government has to fiscal discipline at a time when we see a softening in the global economy, something that those opposite might like to simply brush over.