Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State (House)) Share this | Hansard source

In many ways these bills are routine bills. They make provisions and appropriations for the ordinary functions of government for the rest of this financial year. They facilitate a number of measures in the midyear update, and the numbers themselves are already incorporated into the budget bottom line of that MYEFO which was handed down in December last year. Obviously, as always, Labor won't be standing in the way of supply.

We do take the opportunity to make some broader points about this government's management, or mismanagement, of the nation's finances. I had to replay it and listen to it again; I thought my ears were deceiving me last week when I heard the Prime Minister at the Press Club say that nobody can say the Liberals have mismanaged the finances or mismanaged the budget or the economy, because the hard, cold facts, in black and white in the government's own budgets and midyear updates, tell a very different story to that story being told by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer.

Just consider a few of these numbers. On the Liberals' watch our net debt has more than doubled. It's now at an all-time record of $360 billion. Those opposite inherited $175 billion worth of net debt. It's now $360 billion. It's more than doubled in the five or so years that they've been in office. Similarly, gross debt has now crashed through half a trillion dollars for the first time ever in the history of this country. It's well over half a trillion dollars. It's now $543.3 billion and growing. It's almost double the $280 billion in gross debt that those opposite inherited from the former government. Since the member for Cook has become the latest Prime Minister in the Liberals' game of musical chairs, gross debt has actually grown by almost $11 billion. That means since the member for Cook has been Prime Minister he's piled on $64 million a day in debt, and that's a far cry from the so-called responsible budget management that he likes to bang on about.

I think what's more surprising to many people than the amount of debt, the quantum of debt, that those opposite have racked up is just how quickly that they've done it. Inevitably, those opposite will say, 'The government beforehand racked up some debt too.' And during the global financial crisis we did take responsible action to deal with that big substantial threat, the sharpest synchronised downturn in the global economy since the Great Depression 80 years earlier, and, yes, that meant public debt.

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