Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We will pursue our objective of having a surplus, as a percentage of GDP, of at least 1.5 per cent. We will provide the leadership to restrain the spending that those opposite could not restrain. Of course, the former Treasurer is on the record, in the Howard biography, complaining that the previous Prime Minister, in 2004, went on a reckless spending spree—a reckless spending spree that put upward pressure on inflation and upward pressure on interest rates. The consequence of that has been seven interest rate rises in the last three years.

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