Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, this goes to the capacity of Australia to be in the business of lending money to other nations. If we do not have our own public finances in check, if we are dealing with the biggest spending government in modern Australian history and the biggest borrowing government in modern Australian history, that cuts to the chase of whether you have the capacity to lend other countries money. It is easy to say, ‘Lend other countries money.’ You just borrow money to lend other countries money. The interesting thing is that your capacity to be generous at the expense of Australian taxpayers is severely reduced when this government is in the business of borrowing for day-to-day purposes in Australia.

I would not suggest for a second—and various people have tried to verbal the opposition on this—that it is unnecessary as of today to borrow some money. Our argument with the government is about, firstly, whether the government should be borrowing so much money—$315 billion gross—and, secondly, whether it is money well spent. Is it well targeted and well spent? I say to the House and to the Australian people, the Rudd government has announced new additional expenditure items to the tune of $10 million an hour since the election.

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