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

I think the shadow Treasurer should give up karaoke and take up policy. Every set of budget papers, every budget, contains a sensitivity analysis. This is simply the case in the budget papers every year. The fact there is a sensitivity analysis that says, ‘If this set of events happens it might have that impact,’ does not in any way erode the credibility and the standing of the forecast in this budget. In no way at all does it do that. The forecasts in this budget across the board are cautious, they are credible and they are realistic.

What did the opposition say last year when they were attacking the budget? They claimed our forecasts were too optimistic. They trashed the budget in this House and they trashed it around the country for being too optimistic, because the first refuge of a scoundrel is to trash the forecasts. The forecasts are prepared by the same Treasury that the opposition worked with for something like 12 years. It is the same Treasury that produced sensitivity analyses like that for 12 years. So these are forecasts of the Treasury which are credible and realistic. They are forecasts of the Treasury which match the forecasts of the Reserve Bank generally. They are forecasts which generally match the forecasts of the International Monetary Fund.

But this year like last year, the opposition want people to come in here and somehow believe that there is something wrong with the forecasts, because they cannot get their act together when it comes to economic policy. They cannot tell us when they would bring the budget back to surplus. They cannot tell us what savings they would make in the budget. They cannot answer the most simple questions about an alternative macroeconomic framework because they simply do not have one.

They have been coming into this parliament for years talking about the need for savings whilst they have been up in the Senate blocking the savings that are essential in our budget. They simply are not credible at all when it comes to economic policy, and their having no alternative framework means that they want to come in here and trash the Treasury, trash the Reserve Bank and trash the International Monetary Fund. There is simply no alternative framework among those opposite. They have so little credibility that nobody listens to them any more.

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