Lisa Darmanin (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to get some facts on the record here. We just heard Senator Colbeck draw attention to some items that we were debating earlier this afternoon—that the highest-spending government was the Morrison government and the highest-taxing government was the Howard government. We won't be taking lectures from those opposite, the same Liberals who left us with much higher and rising inflation and a mess to clean up in the budget. The coalition's many false claims and their record are among the many reasons that nobody takes the Liberals seriously on the economy anymore.

If we want to talk about false statements, what about on the Insiders program just this past Sunday, 1 February? Ted O'Brien, from the other side, made a number of false statements that just don't stack up. Ted O'Brien claimed that this is the highest-spending government in 40 years. Spending as a percentage of GDP peaked at 31.4 per cent, under the Morrison government. We brought it down to 24.4 per cent in 2022-2023, and it is forecast to stay below 27 per cent and gradually fall over the forward estimates. Real spending growth averaged 4.1 per cent under the coalition from 2013 to 2022, when they were in government, whereas it's averaged 1.7 per cent under our government, including over the seven years through to the 2028-29 forecast. Even when the COVID years are removed, average real spending growth was higher under the coalition, at 2.6 per cent.

Contrast that with the performance of this government. We have found $114 billion in savings already, and $20 billion of that was in the budget update just less than two months ago. And we have engineered the biggest nominal improvement in our history in a three-year term, a $233 billion budget improvement, and we have delivered a couple of surpluses and got the debt down to $176 billion. Our last budget update alone included the same amount of savings as the Liberals had in their last seven budget updates combined. So again I say on taking lectures from those opposite that, really, the Australian people know better.

Those outcomes that I just talked about then in terms of budget management are those that have been put in place since we came to office in 2022. We had the first back-to-back surplus in almost two decades, returned over 70 per cent of all tax receipt upgrades to the bottom line, compared to our predecessors, who returned only about 40 per cent, and debt in 2024-2025 was $188 billion lower, as I said, than was forecast prior to the 2022 election, saving the nation around $60 billion in interest costs over the decade.

I think it's worth getting the facts on the record just to be clear that the biggest-taxing government in modern Australian economic history is not the Albanese Labor government but was the Howard government. The federal tax take hit of 24.2 per cent of GDP in 2005-2006 was higher than the 2024-25 of 23.7 per cent.

In addition to this, I would also say that, were those opposite in government, that spending would be higher. In fact, the coalition also opposed the Labor tax cuts for all 14 million Australians that we proposed to bring in and did bring in on 1 July last year, including those earning less than $45,000. Two days before the election, the member for Hume snuck out the coalition costings, which revealed $75 billion in higher personal income taxes and a whole range of other high taxes on motorists and the housing construction industry, higher student debt, bigger mortgages for tens of thousands of Australians and higher power bills. Those opposite want to lecture us about spending, yet their proposal was to spend more. At the same time, this government, with careful and responsible budget management, has delivered savings, lowered taxes and brought in a range of measures to support the Australian people.