Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Everybody on this side of the House is proud of the fact that in Australia we have had 21 consecutive calendar years of growth. What has that been based on? It has been based on good fiscal policy. It is based on the fiscal policy that we have put forward in the House and the fiscal policy that those opposite used to put forward in this House. We are committed to a medium-term fiscal policy that delivers surpluses on average over the economic cycle. That is something that those opposite are now rejecting.

The proposition that they are bringing into this parliament is that we should cut our budget for every dollar of revenue lost because of the global financial crisis. The proposition that they are now putting to this parliament, in complete repudiation of what the previous government was committed to, is that we should have cut $160 billion from expenditure in Australia in the face of those revenue write-downs. What that would have caused in Australia is a very substantial recession, very high unemployment and a lot of misery in the Australian community.

Because we on this side of the House had the courage of our convictions to respond to the events of the global financial crisis and the aftermath of that, we have incurred some debt—modest debt; one-tenth—

Mr Pyne interjecting—

He is now saying that we are going after people's bank accounts. Is there no end to how desperate this mob can get when it comes to fiscal policy, no end to how irresponsible they can get in this House? They prove every day that they are incapable of understanding or running a $1.5 trillion economy.

The fact is that I talked this morning to about 40 overseas investors. I spoke to them about the fundamentals of the Australian economy: solid growth, low inflation, lower interest rates and a strong investment pipeline. These fundamentals of the Australian economy are things that a finance minister anywhere else in the world would be proud to have and give their right arm to have. But what we must do is put in place responsible fiscal policy that supports jobs and growth. Because we had the guts to do that, there are 900,000 extra jobs in Australia and 900,000 families with security and the prospect of future careers. What they would have had under that mob is high unemployment, low growth and a very significant number of business closures. They are showing how reckless they are.

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