Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Your legacy to the children and the grandchildren of Australia is a debt that is already costing us $1 billion a month in net interest payments. And that is on borrowed money. That is like paying the mortgage on your credit card and then borrowing a bit more to pay the interest. That is precisely what we are doing. No country can continue in this way, as I said, paying the mortgage on the credit card.

What else was your legacy, Senator Conroy—jobless queues that grew with over 200,000 people unemployed, in stark contrast to the record of the Howard years of 250,000 jobs. There were than 50,000 illegal maritime arrivals on your watch, which created a budget blow-out of almost $12 billion.

We did not cause the problems, but we will be fixing the problems. We were elected to fix the problem, and fix it we will. This is why this budget reduces our projected maximum debt by almost $300 billion. We will take the projected deficit in 2017-18 from about $30 billion to under $3 billion within sight of surplus.

And on the question of surplus, your 500 broken promises—remember, Labor guaranteed over 500 times that they would return the budget to surplus. You do not even know how to spell 'surplus' let alone deliver one. It has been a very, very long time in this country since those opposite delivered a surplus to the Australian people.

So we will take the projected deficit and bring it within sight of surplus. Our promise to the Australian public when we were elected last year was to build a stronger economy so that everyone can get ahead. We would be doing so by abolishing taxes, starting with the carbon tax. So I say to those opposite: respect the mandate that the Australian public gave the coalition government to repeal the carbon tax that is costing households $550 a year. But you just don't get it. We went through an election and yet you sit there opposite and still obstruct our plan to repeal the carbon tax.

I say to those opposite: we were elected to fix the budget, and fix the budget we will. We will end the waste. We are stopping the boats and we are building the roads of the 21st century. But predominantly, unless you have a strong economy, then you do not have the social dividend that that brings, and just like households across Australia have to live within their means, so too will this government live within its means.