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

I thank the shadow Treasurer for his question. As I said before, we have a very clear strategy that will begin returning the budget to surplus and pay down debt as the economy recovers, and the budget delivers on that strategy. We put in place the structural saves that are absolutely essential over the long term, we have offset new spending by the final year of the forward estimates and we have held real growth in spending to under two per cent in the years the economy is projected to grow above trend, in 2011-12 and 2012-13. And, of course, this strategy is expected to see the budget return to surplus in 2015-16 and reduce the levels of debt to 3.7 per cent of GDP by 2019-20.

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