Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We never voted against the repair of roads in Queensland; we voted against you introducing a new tax. Because of your economic incompetence you had to introduce a new tax to fund the fixing of the flood damage in Queensland—just one of 20-odd different taxes you have introduced.

It is important that we return our budget to surplus but it has got to be done in an orderly and sensible manner. This budget surplus is only a promise. The IMF is a bit early in its call to congratulate the government on returning the budget to surplus, because it is a promise that we will not know about until September 2013.

Labor's record of budget surpluses does not bear spending much time on, because they have not produced one in 20-odd years. We have got to a stage where we now have the highest debt in the nation's history. This Labor government has lived in the red, spending up big at the taxpayers' expense. It is building up quite a credit reference, borrowing up to $100 million every day and paying up to $100 million a week in interest. Net debt is forecast to peak at about $136 billion in 2013-14, with about $7 billion a year in interest. Last time I checked that would probably fund the NDIS. It is just one of many examples of the profligate spending of this government. Programs that could have been implemented if they had spent their money more wisely cannot be implemented, or have had to be delayed.

In all of this the average Australian is yet to see real value for money. They have not benefited at all from the $4 billion blow-out in the cost of border protection. They certainly did not benefit from the nearly $2 billion blow-out for the Building the Education Revolution.

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