Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Tomorrow in the budget, what you will not get from this government is the sort of approach that those opposite are proposing. What we have had from the Leader of the Opposition is that he wants to run the country like a union. If those opposite, with their tax-and-spend approach, get to run the economy like a union, it will be deregistered under the sort of economic management that we will see from those opposite. We will not allow the economy to be run like a union, as the Leader of the Opposition wants to do. We will do it soberly; we will do it responsibly; we will not tax in order to spend like those opposite are proposing to do.

Tomorrow night what we will see is a budget that backs in Australians, who will ensure that we make the transition of the economy from the resources boom to a more diversified economy. We are going to do it—whether it is investing in our Defence industry to ensure the technology transfer and the jobs operating in that sector. And we are going to get there with the export trade agreements, which have been such a resounding success of this government. We are going to back in Australians who are making this transition a success.

What those opposite and the Leader of the Opposition want to do is to run the country like a union. We will not be using the bookkeeping skills of unions to run this country. What we will be doing is what coalition governments always do, and that is to ensure that governments live within their means and do not go on a tax-and-spend rampage that we know from those opposite.

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