Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, you may see on the Notice Paper that the member who was due to be speaking here now was the member for Indi. Just to explain to the House: the member for Indi is getting married next week and is making some preparations, and I am sure that the House will give her all the best wishes for her upcoming nuptials.

I find it a bit rich when the member for Canberra—and the Labor Party, I might add—gets up here and tries to lecture us on things like interest rates, government deficits and so on. The fact is that the last Labor government created deficits as a matter of course. It was an art form. People remember the first 90 years of Federation. In 1901, this country was federated with a government with a zero balance. Since that time, we have had two world wars, the Vietnam War, the Korean War—plenty of armed conflicts. We have had a depression. We have built a city here in Canberra. We have spent a lot of taxpayers’ money. In 90 years as a country, we accumulated a net debt of $16 billion. It took us 90 years to get that. Over every year of the next five years of Labor government, from 1991 to 1996, they increased that $16 billion debt, which we had taken 90 years to accumulate. So from 1991 to 1996 the last Labor government increased that debt from $16 billion to $96 billion.

Now we can say that we have got rid of that debt. We are the first government in Australia’s history, since it federated some 105 years ago, to be net free of debt. When we first came into government we were paying $8.4 billion worth of debt—

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