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

Well, it was $100 billion until we found out that he was short by a rounding error of some $19.5 billion. Their promises for education are so linked to the tobacco excise revenue, courtesy of the member for Adelaide, who has linked these two together. It is what we know over the budget and forward estimates. Let's just put the $20 billion black hole that they have to one side over 10 years. Just over the budget and forward estimates, the hole in their funding on tobacco excise revenue is $3.25 billion. That is money that they do not have to spend on the promises that they have been making to Australian parents. But we have seen it all before. We saw it with the mining tax with the member from Lilley when he was Treasurer. He was going to have the great mining tax. If it were operational now, we would actually be paying money to the mining companies as a result of that tax. And this was going to build roads and it was going to do all sorts of things. It was one of the member for Grayndler sphinxes that he built while he was the minister for infrastructure. But what we have seen from those opposite is form. They get these things wrong and then they cannot fund the things they say they can fund. What happens then is the Australian people are either let down, as they were by those opposite, or they pay more in tax, because what we know about those opposite is they know they cannot control spending. I am quite sure they will make up that $20 billion black hole. They will just tax people more and more and more, and it will not stop, because this Leader of the Opposition cannot stop spending, that shadow Treasurer cannot stop spending and, worse than that, they cannot stop taxing.

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