Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

How could I possibly follow that? Madam Deputy Speaker, I mourn the day when we lose the member for Banks, when a faction finally rolls in at the next election and he is gone through one of the factions—when the member for Blaxland or one of the other factional bosses decides to get rid of him. I mourn that day because that was quite an extraordinary speech. He basically said (1) we should abolish the states and (2) Queensland did better than all of the states from the funding over the past 10 years and that they should not have. So he has bagged Queensland. It was quite an extraordinary speech. He also mentioned an interesting year. He mentioned 2003-04 in relation to health funding. It is a very consistent year. I believe, and I stand to be corrected, that is the year we finally paid off Labor’s debt. I am pretty sure that is when we paid off Labor’s debt—$96 billion of debt, Member for Banks.

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