Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a government keen to remake its image after four years of vacillation, policy cul-de-sacs and less-than-masterful inactivity. In the lead-up to this year's 'Lazarus rises' attempt at a budget, the government did what many had been calling for over many years: it sought to distinguish between good and bad debt. It finally accepted that borrowing for infrastructure that would last for many decades and be enjoyed by multiple generations was not the same as borrowing to pay for recurrent costs.

Many hoped—and I was one of them—that that would mean the government would drop its deficit fetishism and start investing again in the public goods and services that our regions and cities desperately need.

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