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

The fact is, the Labor Party left us with expenditure as a percentage of GDP well above the long-term average. In doing so, the only way you can fix the budget is to reduce expenditure, to reduce expenditure the way Bob Hawke urged us to do at the beginning of this year and Paul Keating urged us to do at the beginning of this year—and Dr Martin Parkinson has urged us to do, and the governor of the Reserve Bank has urged us to do and Angel Gurría, the secretary-general of the OECD, has urged us to do, and Moody's and Standard & Poor's have urged us to do and every major business leader in Australia has urged us to do, and, in fact, the Labor Party, before the last election, urged us to do. And that is to get the budget back to surplus. Either you have to reduce expenditure or you have to increase taxes.

No wonder the Labor Party says, 'We've got $21 billion of savings!' Under the Labor Party regime, savings were tax increases, that is what they were. They do not understand that tax increases are a greater burden on everyday Australians. Of course, under the Labor Party, the tax increases they say will fix the budget include reintroducing the carbon tax and reintroducing—

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