Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to answer the question. He asked what the problem is. The problem is Labor. It is Labor that delivered the five biggest deficits ever. It is Labor that has delivered a national debt that will take us generations to repay. And it is Labor that delivered for Queensland an $80 billion debt that Premier Newman and his colleagues have had to try to address. He is doing that through his budget. Through his budget he is trying to restore some balance in Queensland.

He also inherited a horrible legacy from having followed a Labor government—a Labor government of waste; a Labor government that had actually left schools so dilapidated that many of them had not been painted during the whole time that Labor was in office. Labor had left the people of Queensland an enormous debt, and that is on top of the debt that Queenslanders have to share with other Australians when it comes to our current debt.

When it comes to expenditure on hospitals and on education, let me repeat the self-evident point. Total funding on schools from this government increases by eight per cent this year, eight per cent the following year, eight per cent the year after that and six per cent the following year. When it comes to health, it increases by nine per cent this year, nine per cent the following year, nine per cent the year after that and six per cent the year after that. Total Commonwealth funding to Queensland amounts to $96 billion. Indeed, Queensland will receive $53 billion from GST share, and that is $2.2 billion more than was anticipated in MYEFO. So the Commonwealth is providing significant funds to Queensland and to other states.

Let me say by way of observation that, while I quoted nine per cent increases for health and eight per cent increases for education, those are national figures. Queensland figures are actually better than that. They are actually going to get more money than that. So that helps Queensland to try to address the problems Labor left behind—Labor's problems that Premier Newman in his budget has to address and which he is manfully seeking to do. I congratulate him on the work that has been done to rebuild Queensland—a task that we are also setting about nationally.

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