James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) | Hansard source

In 1996, Labor and Paul Keating bequeathed Australia $96 billion of debt. I thought that was a pretty big number. But Prime Minister Albanese and the Labor Party are bequeathing Australians a trillion dollars of debt. As Senator Scarr said, it's a million million dollars. I was interjecting—which I know is disorderly. I was asking various Labor ministers, 'How many zeros are there in a trillion dollars?' There are 12 zeros in a trillion dollars. But more worrying than the number of zeros in a trillion dollars is the interest payments. I shall be speaking for four minutes this afternoon. In the four minutes that I am speaking, our debt will have gone up $208,000—that is $52,000 a minute. That's a $27-billion-a-year interest bill.

What are this government going to do about it? The first thing they're doing is blaming everyone else. They're blaming the previous government. They're blaming world affairs. They're blaming Robert Menzies. They're saying that the dog ate the homework, that the cat ran off with the iPad. Everyone else is to blame except this Labor government in coming to terms with their massive incompetence when it comes to fiscal management. There's an old saying that, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I am not using this as a prop, but there is a plan that has been put out by the Leader of the Opposition, Angus Taylor, and the leader of the National Party, Matt Canavan—