George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Abetz), the Leader of The Nationals in the Senate (Senator Joyce) and Senators Cormann and Sinodinos today relating to the 2013-14 Budget.

When last night we learned that, on the latest version of the government's budget projections, the budget would return to surplus or, I should say—let me not fall into the trap laid by the Labor Party—would, for the first time, achieve a surplus in 2015-16, no fewer than eight years after the election of the Labor government, eight years in which every budget has been or is projected to be in deficit, I was reminded of the tale of Lemuel Gulliver. After he visited Lilliput, Gulliver went on to travel to the land of Balnibarbi and, as Jonathan Swift records:

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. … He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate.

Last night, when we heard Treasurer Swan say that after eight years a Labor government would eventually have the budget back in surplus, I was reminded of the man of meagre aspect in Gulliver's Travelswho, after eight years, would have succeeded in extracting sunshine from cucumbers. The fact is, this budget is comprised of rubbery figures, dodgy methodology and incredible assumptions. I draw the attention of the Senate to just one of them, which goes directly to Senator Abetz's question concerning the cost of boat arrivals. Let me take you to Budget Paper No. 1, page 6-49, which is the assessment of the costs incurred by unauthorised illegal boat arrivals, estimated in this budget to be $4.376 billion. We all know that the rate of unlawful arrivals has not only been growing but also has been growing at an accelerated rate—