Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

Sadly, we start this year as we finished the last—with the member for Lindsay not even spending 30 seconds addressing the subject of the matter of public importance and not spending one second trying to establish how this government may in fact return to surplus. The bottom line is that they have no surplus—we have all heard that from the Treasurer's mouth, after hundreds of comments to the contrary—but they also have no plan. They have absolutely no idea: no fiscal strategy. We saw today the ducking and weaving and the avoidance of the issue. They have no idea how to get this country back on track financially. That is what is eating at the heart of certainty. That is what is eating at the heart of any sense of stability. It is why people are not spending. It is why they are paying off the mortgage. It is why companies are not investing around this country. And now we have the government trashing the messenger. Don't trash the messenger. We are just reporting the facts. As the Prime Minister likes to say, we are reporting the facts. Do not start that time-worn technique of attacking the messenger.

The time has come for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer to stop crying wolf about the economy and to start taking responsibility for the problems that they themselves have created—

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