Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the second part of the question first. I do not speculate on what advice I may have received from my department, but I would point out that the kind of advice the member is referring to would be advice that would actually go to the Treasurer, more so than to me, in any event.

On the first question, the government have not set a specific limit nor indeed sought to calculate a specific limit. The only observation I make is that, given that the projected debt levels will still have Australia at a level of government debt that is way below virtually all comparable countries, it is very clear that the projected level of debt is a very long way below where any ultimate limit might be. The point of the observation I made on that television show was to indicate that the government are very conscious of the fact that we have to have a strategy to minimise the accumulation of debt over a period of time and also a strategy to return the budget to surplus in order that the process of paying down that debt can commence as soon as possible.

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