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

That is not what he thinks! I refer the minister to statement 10, page 6, which is the authoritative table of Budget Paper No. 1. The morning after the budget was presented David Koch sought to challenge me on this table, but I had read it before he saw it. I refer to the fact that, as a percentage of GDP, in the last two years of the coalition government expenditure was 23.2 per cent and then in 2007-08 it was just 23 per cent. Yet, at the most optimistic end of the chart, in the last projected year of the Rudd government’s budget to 2013-14, it is still 23.6 per cent, which is above the levels of the last coalition government. I ask the minister: when will you ever get to the same low levels of spending as that of the last year of the coalition government?

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