Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I remember Bill Hayden too. But then Mr Keating challenged, and that wasn't successful, and then we struggled on, with the Labor Party slitting each other's throats. The animosity was so bad in those days. We eventually had Mr Keating challenging again and this time succeeding. And then of course there was all the backstabbing and bitterness that followed that. Fast-forward through to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd times. The animosity, the hatreds, the anger that you saw within the Labor Party at that time was palpable. And we know Mr Albanese is just waiting for the opportunity to get to Mr Shorten, and I see Mr Shorten again is running second in the contest of best Prime Minister—and there are only two contestants—against Mr Morrison, who has been there a mere two weeks. Yet Mr Morrison still leads Mr Shorten substantially, after just two weeks, on who Australians think would be the better Prime Minister.

I think those in the Labor Party who have some ambitions for the future might start sharpening the knives for Mr Shorten. That's because I know how Senator Keneally is doing that, in her obvious desire to become the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate. That's a contest that we'll look at with some interest as the next few months evolve. So, whilst I would really love to debate Senator Marshall on Senator Gallacher's question, I just can't see any relevance in the litany of figures that Senator Marshall produced—which are apparently, according to him, figures that happened within the Liberal Party.

What the people of Australia are concerned about, what I'm concerned about and what all of us on this side are concerned about is getting good government for the Australian people—implementing good policies that make Australia go forward. And we can see that happening, since the Labor Party was defeated back in 2013. We've created over a million jobs for our fellow Australians. We've actually started to pay off the billions of dollars of debt that the Labor Party ran up. And I repeat, time and time again, that when the Howard government left there was $60 billion in credit in the nation's piggy bank. But with a few short years of Labor we had debts that, if they had not been arrested, would have been approaching $700 billion to $800 billion by today.

The coalition government, with Mr Morrison as Treasurer, I might say, has turned that around, and now we have a situation in which there is a real projection towards a surplus the year after next. The deficits that Labor left us with have come down each year, and we're looking forward to the surplus that Mr Wayne Swan, the Labor Treasurer, promised every year, and every year it went up. But we have started the trajectory downwards on Labor's debt, and the year after next we'll move into the surplus category. That's what we're interested in, that's what Mr Morrison's interested in and that's what Australians elect us to do. (Time expired)