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

He said, 'We had to keep within our two per cent cap on spending growth.' The only problem is they did not. He said, 'We had to', but they did not. Of course, the year that he misses out on is the year when Labor increased spending by more than 10 per cent. They just went for the credit card. They smoked the Amex in just one year and then they said, 'We're do-gooders; don't worry. It is all okay.' But the problem was that the locked in 3.7 per cent in increasing expenditure over the next few years.

The member for Watson is like this little dog that I got for the family before Christmas. In training the dog, I keep saying, 'Don't run out on the street into the traffic.' That is what the member for Watson keeps doing—he keeps going out into the traffic and then we have to pull him back and point out that it is, in fact, very dangerous for him to do that, because he gets his numbers wrong. Just as he got his numbers wrong on every single occasion in the past he keeps doing it. So my best advice is: stay off the road and out of the traffic.

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