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

No? $8.8 billion I had to put into the Reserve Bank, and why? Because the Labor Party when in government had taken extraordinary dividends and in fact materially weakened the capacity of the Reserve Bank to respond to unforeseen circumstances. So we had to put $8.8 billion into the Reserve Bank. Then buried deep in the Economic Statement of the former Treasurer was a commitment to over 14,000 Public Service redundancies, 14,500 Public Service redundancies that the Labor Party did not have the courage to explain to the Public Service. Did they fund those redundancies? No, they did not. Shock and surprise. And there are other areas. They failed to properly finance the ACCC, they took $1.2 billion from Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory in relation to the so-called Gonski funding. We know it is the old story: the Labor Party wrecks the joint, the coalition has to come in to fix it. That is exactly what has happened. That is one of the reasons why I am absolutely positive our forecasts are more accurate than anything they have ever delivered.

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