Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

It is a novel concept for Labor governments. You can keep on spending—you can spend and you can spend and you can spend—but one day the Australian people have to pay for it. If the member for Throsby wants to talk about political parties having form on this, then let us talk about the form of the state Labor governments, of the former federal governments and of the current federal Labor government in relation to being able to manage a balanced budget. The simple reason the Victorian government has had to make some very difficult decisions in relation to TAFEs is that it is cleaning up the mess left behind by the Bracks and Brumby governments. The prime reason the Newman LNP government in Queensland is making some tough budgetary decisions right now is that they are cleaning up Anna's mess—an $80 billion mess. It is hard to believe that a state government could achieve an $80 billion mess like that, but Anna Bligh was up to it, ably assisted by Peter Beattie.

And then we look at the New South Wales situation. If you listened to those opposite you would think that members of the Liberal Party and the National Party just want to cause grief for people when it comes to making tough budgetary decisions. The simple fact of the matter, once again, is that the O'Farrell government has had to clean up after—how many years was it? How many years of torture in New South Wales was it?

See this speech in context