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

Our interest bill alone in that time would be nearly $3 billion a month—$3 billion a month for the legacy of debt left by the Labor Party in just six years. In just six years they managed to lock in expenditure that left us with a trajectory of debt to $667 billion, with an interest bill of nearly $3 billion a month. And now the interest bill is over $1 billion a month for what Labor did over a six-year period. The fact is they have left us with the fastest growth rate in spending of the top 17 surveyed IMF countries in the world. They have left us with the third fastest growth in net debt of the 17 surveyed countries in the world.

Labor say there is no problem—'No tragedy here; no problem here'—because from their perspective they did nothing wrong. Well, they did. The first act of wrongness is their denial. We have heard about the War of the Roses, but I want to tell you about the 'War of the Bowens'—I want to tell you about the 'Battle of the Bowens'. The Bowen in the Labor Party seems to think that there is really no problem here, just a little budget repair job, but the Bowen who is the Parliamentary Budget Officer, appointed by the last parliament as the independent arbiter in these matters, said:

It is time to start coming out—

of debt and deficit—

otherwise the longer you leave it the more exposed you become and the harder it is to wind it back.

That is the independent Bowen, the Bowen who knows what he is talking about. That Bowen—Phil Bowen, the Parliamentary Budget Officer—has belled the cat. He has proven the fact, as has every other independent analyst, that we need to act now to stop the debt getting out of control. The only way to do that is to back a budget that is honest. That comes as a rude shock to Labor—an honest budget! The fact is we have delivered an honest budget and we will fix the economy.

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