Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Boyce for that supplementary question and for her previous questions. Repairing Labor's budget mess is so important to build a stronger economy, to create more jobs, to restore confidence, to restore investment growth and to actually ensure that, over the medium to long term, we can fund the important services of government in a sustainable way. What Labor did, cruelly, was to create all sorts of expectations and make all sorts of promises to all sorts of people right across Australia, 'We're going to spend some more money here; we're going to spend some more money there,' and never provide the funding for it. They were always chasing their tail, coming up with yet another additional tax—another tax here, another tax there. If you do not live within your means, if you do not actually raise the revenue for the spending that you commit yourself to, inevitably you have to come up with more new taxes. We have to bring our spending back under control so that we can keep our taxes at a competitive level so that we can grow the economy more strongly and fund services sustainably. (Time expired)