Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians) Share this | Hansard source

The one thing that we are doing is ensuring that we keep the fundamentals of the Australian economy strong—that's what we're doing—so that every young Australian has the opportunity for employment. As I explained yesterday, we've got a number of employment programs in place to assist young people to work their way through the system, but if, as the Labor Party projected at the last election, they had imposed $387 billion in new taxes on the Australian economy, where would the Australian economy be today? And how much of that $387 billion in new taxes did they project for youth programs?

They actually voted to remove youth programs that we put in place, so I don't intend to be lectured by the Labor Party with respect to how we manage the Australian economy. We have said that we will continue to maintain our economic settings by keeping the economy strong despite the global headwinds that have been projected by the IMF, and, in those circumstances, by opening up new markets—