Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Casey reminds me the Assistant Treasurer boasted to his electorate of Lindsay—Western Sydney—that he had delivered a surplus. Not only that; he promised to give them further tax cuts. And they were legislated tax cuts. We thought the whole tax cut promise hit rock bottom when Paul Keating said back in 1993: 'Don't worry, Australia. We're delivering you tax cuts that are l-a-w.' He said they were in law. But, going beyond that, this mob, not pleased to have that great legacy of Paul Keating and the l-a-w tax cuts, not only puts them in l-a-w law but then reverses them.

We used to joke that Labor could not hold a policy from Lateline until lunchtime; now they cannot hold a budget cut from budget to budget. And you know what? There is no intervening election. It is simply their incompetence. So Australians, who were told by the government they should plan with confidence for the tax cuts, compensation, pension increases and increases in the family tax benefit, now have this mob not only taking those away, reversing the legislation and repealing it for tax cuts but again breaking their word.

Nothing illustrates it more than what Labor has said about government debt. In this place on numerous occasions we asked the Treasurer, 'What is going to be the limit on the amount of money you are going to have to borrow on behalf of the Australian people?' After in previous years giving us a fair dinkum answer and saying, 'We believe peak debt will be at X,' this year he obfuscated. He twisted and turned. He tried to have different definitions of debt. He went from net debt to gross debt to the debt subject to the debt limit. He tried every twist and turn. Clearly he did not want to answer. Then in estimates the question was asked, and the Treasury, clearly embarrassed by the failure of the Treasurer to provide an answer, decided that they were going to do it.

Today in Senate estimates the Treasury revealed the true peak in Commonwealth government issuance. Bear in mind that this goes to trust. It was the Labor Party that said we need to have a debt limit of $75 billion. They broke that. Then they said there would be a debt limit of $200 billion. They broke that. Then they said it would be $250 billion and they broke that. Then they said, 'We need to increase the debt limit to $300 billion.' They said they would never break $250 billion: 'Don't worry. We only need to go to $300 billion because we might, somewhere in the middle of the year, creep a little bit above $250 billion—a week here, a week there. It's really all about issuance, but don't worry, because at the end of the year we won't be above $250 billion, because we're going to deliver a surplus.' Well, one broken promise leads to another broken promise, which leads to another broken promise. What a surprise!

So now we find out, as if dragging teeth from a crocodile, that Labor, which has a $300 billion debt limit, now is going to go to $290 billion before Christmas this year, and next year to $330 billion, and the year after that to $340 billion. Then, for the year after that, it says 'not available'. Well, I am kind of hoping you are not going to be available on 15 September. But for some odd reason the debt keeps going up and up and up and up. It is good enough for the government to be able to forecast in 2016-17 that it is going to spend so much on chasing orange roughies down a river or on education or health. In fact, it is boasting about how much money it is going to spend on education in 2022, but it cannot tell us how much it is going to borrow in four years time. You know why, Mr Deputy Speaker? Because it keeps going up and up and up, and at the same time Labor's credibility is going down, down, down.

You know what is worse? A Treasurer who is proud of mediocrity and proud of his legacy of gargantuan debt and deficits compared to his predecessor. You know what, Mr Deputy Speaker? He does not have the guts to come in here and front the Australian people and say, 'I need to increase the credit limit again.' He sent someone else to the bank. He does not have the guts to front the bank manager and say, 'I need to increase my credit card limit for the fifth time.' Instead he comes into this place and says, 'We've delivered the information on the debt limit that the Liberals never did.' We never had the debt. We paid off your debt last time. Now you are leaving us—or 'someone else', as he said to Neil Mitchell on Melbourne radio—after 14 September to clean up your mess. Shame, Labor, shame! This is the second time in my lifetime in this parliament that we have had to step up to the plate and clean up your damn mess. But the problem is that it is the taxpayers of Australia that do the heavy lifting. It is the taxpayers of Australia that have to find the extra taxes to pay down the debt, because Labor is addicted to debt. Labor is addicted to spending other people's money, and the problem for Labor is that it has run out of other people's money, and that is typical of the socialist way.

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