Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

does is it takes into account the abolition of the schoolkids bonus. That was meant to be paid for by the something called the 'mining tax' which raised no revenue. Are the opposition seriously suggesting that we should borrow money, in a period of debt and deficit, to pay for a schoolkids bonus at this time? It is absolutely a bogus figure. I might make the other point here that when the coalition came to government we inherited from Labor the five worst deficits in Australian history, totalling $191 billion. That was compounded by a further $123 billion in projected cumulative deficits between 2013-14 and 2016-17. The prediction from Treasury was that if we did not take remedial action, which involves finding savings and restraining expenditure, then we were looking down the barrel of 10-plus years of deficits—

Ms Owens interjecting—

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