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

The Prime Minister and I and the finance minister are committed to fiscal discipline, which is why we have put in place our budget rules, which I was talking about before—unlike those opposite, who, when it was raining gold bars during the mining boom, could not find enough money to put a basic pension increase in for single aged pensioners. Shame on them! They could not find enough money to invest in basic infrastructure. Shame on them! They had an absolutely appalling record of not finding savings. They spent like drunken sailors at the top of the boom and now the global recession has shone a very bright light on that.

Let us just look at the savings record of the government compared to that of the previous government. This government has found savings over two budgets of $55 billion, $22.6 billion in this budget and $33 billion in the last budget. This is the record of the previous Liberal government: last budget $3.2 billion in savings for 2007-08, in 2006-07 only $4.3 billion, and in 2005-06 $4.6 billion. They were there at the top of the mining boom and it was raining gold bars and they could not look after pensioners, they could not invest in infrastructure and now they have got the hide to come into this House and claim they know what fiscal discipline means. They have not got a clue, and the country is now living with the consequences of some of the practices of those opposite as well as the global recession. We will deal with the global recession in a responsible and mature way, and we have done that, and we will chart the course back to surplus in a fiscally responsible way.

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