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

I thank the member for her question and the Prime Minister for giving me the opportunity to respond. The truth is that, in the electorate of Robertson and in the electorate of Dobell, funding for all schools is going up; it is not going down. The problem with the premise of the member's question is it is all based on an untruth, because the funding that Labor promised was there was never there; it is all fake money. There was never money to pay for the things that Labor was talking about.

I agree with the member for Mayo who, in making remarks earlier today about the education funding debate, said, 'The whole debate has been about comparing apples'—that is, the funding offered by the government—'with imaginary pears,' which is what is offered by the Labor Party. Now, we do know there is enough imaginary fruit on that side of the parliament to make an entire magic pudding when it comes to budgets, because we know that is how they do their budgets.

We also know that the way Labor do budgets is they spend the same money over and over and over again. They say they are going to reverse the enterprise tax plan. By doing that, they say they are going to fund not just budget repair, not just schools, not just retaining a AAA, not just the NDIS, not just health and hospitals, not just universities and, indeed, foreign aid. The shadow Treasurer yesterday said he does not like hypothecation of revenue to specific purposes. The reason he does not like to do that is he cannot spend the money six times; he can only spend it once. It is fake money the Labor Party are talking about. It is fake money backed up by fake promises. The Australian people are tired of that fake money and the fake approach of the Labor Party. It is no coincidence that the Leader of the Opposition's initials are BS, because he is a fraud.

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