Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Of course, I must say that I appreciate being able to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and other appropriation bills, but it is a bit nauseating to hear speech after speech from the opposition whingeing about cuts. I think they must live in some parallel universe. Any responsibility for any cut clearly lies on their shoulders. They fail to realise, after six years of their reckless and wasteful spending, that we as a government now need to find, and we as a nation need to finance, $13 billion every year just to pay the interest on the debt that they created.

If you listen to members of the opposition, they say that it was their spending on the pink batts, their overspending on school halls and their blow-outs on border protection that saved us from the GFC. What a wonderful effort! If this was so good, let us roll out more of these great programs. But just imagine if we had that $13 billion of expenditure and we had not had that reckless, wasteful and politically motivated spending.

Ms Butler interjecting—

Imagine the money that we would have to spend on the new drugs, on aged care, on kids with disabilities, on the roads and on all those things we desperately need in our society.

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