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

In doing so, we had to make some difficult decisions; there is no doubt about that. But ultimately, you would think, the people responsible for creating the mess would help us to try to fix it. And it was the Labor Party. They left us with government expenditure running at $133 million a day more than what we were collecting in revenue. So, every day we had to borrow $133 million just to pay our bills as a government. We have got it down to $96 million a day, but that is still way too much. So, we rely on the goodwill of the parliament to support our measures, which are aimed on one hand at strengthening the Australian economy and on the other of strengthening the government's own balance sheet so that we can prepare Australia for the future.

Now, the challenge for Labor is that they are opposing or blocking $58.6 billion of different initiatives, including $6½ billion of savings they themselves announced but now oppose. Can you believe that? They actually said, when they were last in government, 'Yes, the budget needs repair; here are measures that need to be implemented.' And when they went into opposition they used their numbers in the Senate to block us implementing their own initiatives to fix the budget. But I say to all the Australian people: we are determined to get Australia back to the point where it lives within its means. We are determined to create a stronger economy where people can get a job and have ambition for greater prosperity.

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