Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I did answer a remarkably similar question from the member for Denison and I stand by the answer that I gave to the member for Denison. We had a proper process of making local promises. We costed them. As a result of costing them, we then had them included in the Charter of Budget Honesty process, and in that Charter of Budget Honesty process we found offsetting savings. That is why we can say in this parliament—because we properly costed policies, because we had them properly put through the Charter of Budget Honest process—that we are in a position to honour them. That is, we made the promises that we could afford to make because we had found matching savings for them. That was a stark contrast to the process that the opposition went through where it just went around saying whatever it wanted to in various electorates—never properly costed the promises—and we all know how that ended. It ended with an $11 billion black hole.

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