Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

It has all been spent on Labor electorates as part of their slush funds and their rorts. This is the world's greatest wrecker.

This Treasurer does not deserve a knighthood. He deserves the 'dirty shovel on the doorstep award' because of what he has done to the Australian economy and the Australian people. He inherited the Howard-Costello era of a strong, resilient economy that was once the envy of the world. Despite being the heir to $45 billion in net assets, the Rudd-Swan and Gillard-Swan governments have managed to plunge this nation into $145 billion of debt. It is quite a feat for a Treasurer worthy of an award to build that kind of debt. A negative turnaround has put this country into the red. You may seek to blame the rotating door of prime ministers; the reality is that Treasurer Swan has been a pivotal character—the goose who broke the golden egg. He was handed the opportunities and he destroyed them.

But that is not all. It is getting worse; it is getting deeper. Every day we are out borrowing $135 million to pay for the excess of expenditure over income. That is not the way that we build a better future for our country. We are handing to the next generation debt and an interest bill big enough to be building new hospitals every year, building the roads that the Leader of the House just talks about and taking real action to make our country work again—not just paying for the waste, the mismanagement and the appalling lack of economic control of this government. This economic ineptitude has certainly been a disgrace. A $20 billion surplus has become a $55 billion deficit, and there is a lot more deficit yet to come. When will the 'world's greatest Treasurer' deliver his first balanced budget?

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

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