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

I know the member for Reid has been most concerned about the level of debt that has been handed to the Australian people by the Labor Party. He has often used the line that we are now borrowing to pay the interest on that debt, and he is absolutely right, because in their first five years in office Labor delivered $191 billion in deficits and they left a legacy going forward of $123 billion of deficits, but the budget was never getting to surplus. And they left debt of $667 billion. That is quite amazing.

In his budget reply speech last year the now Prime Minister identified $5 billion a year in savings to help repair the budget. He had the courage to stand up here in the budget in-reply speech, just as the Leader of the Opposition is going to do tonight, and he said, 'There is a budget emergency. Let's put $5 billion a year of savings on the table.' We said that before the election to prove we were so concerned about the legacy of Labor, involving debt and deficits. We were up-front with the Australian people right here. Now, tonight—

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