Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

It is said there few certainties in life, death and taxes being two of them, but another certainty is that when a government runs up a large amount of debt it will mean higher interest rates and higher taxes in the future. For two days running we have asked the Prime Minister to confirm that the $315 billion of debt into which he is plunging our nation will put upward pressure on interest rates. He has refused to answer that because he knows he dare not because he would then have to admit that his reckless spending, and his reckless borrowing to fund that reckless spending, is going to impose real financial hardship on Australians for many years to come. For many years, decades, we will be paying higher interest rates and higher taxes to pay off this enormous burden of debt.

The government of course seeks to spin its way out of this debt splurge that it has taken us into. We had during the budget week the extraordinary performance of a Treasurer who could not to say what the deficit was. There was an apology for him in a column last Saturday which suggested that it was not his fault; it was just due to a typographical error. Dear, dear, poor Wayne—a line was left out and he overlooked it. How credible is that?

Then we had the even more bizarre week when the Prime Minister and the Treasurer were not prepared to actually say the figure of debt they were taking Australia into. The Prime Minister would say in answer to the question, after a few excruciating exchanges, ‘The number is 300,’ without wanting to say it was $300 billion and it would have to be paid back by Australians. This is all part of a government of spin—a government that has recklessly spent and borrowed its way into a position where Australia is heading towards the highest debt, and it already has the highest deficit it has ever had in its history. And all of this has happened in 18 months. The Prime Minister has tried to justify this by spending on infrastructure, even though he has spent very little on infrastructure and the bulk of the money he has borrowed so far has been given away in cash handouts.

So for weeks he goes around the countryside appearing in a hard hat. We do not know whether he is seeking to impersonate Bob the Builder or audition for a part in the Village People—it is hard to say. But, whatever it is, he pops up there in his hard hat. And this process of impersonation is obviously appealing to him because today he decided to impersonate somebody else. He turned up in the press conference for his ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment. All he needed was a bomber jacket and an aircraft carrier and he would have been impersonating the former President of the United States. But I have to draw the House’s attention to probably one of the most deluded statements by this most delusional Prime Minister.

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