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

Senator Wong can laugh as much as she likes. They are lag indicators. We inherited a very bad trajectory. We inherited that trajectory after Labor put more and more lead into our saddlebag: the mining tax, the carbon tax, more than 21,000 new pieces of red tape, the fiasco in terms of live exports—you name it. What did we do? We took the lead out of our saddlebag. We made sure that Australia's economy was more competitive. We know the cost of doing business and making sure that we are more productive. Let me say: if we had stayed on Labor's bad trajectory, economic growth in the last quarter would have been worse. We are now in a stronger position than we would have been if we had not done all of the work that we have done implementing our economic plan for stronger growth and more jobs. If we had stayed on Labor's bad trajectory, Australia would be in a much weaker position now. We are now in a stronger position than we would have been, if we had not been implementing our plan.