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

The Leader of the Opposition may have an ability that I don't have, and that is a crystal ball to see into the future and see that the coronavirus was going to impact on the Australian economy. Every time we have spoken about the economy, we have done it on the basis of the knowledge that we have and the certainties that are present at that time. It was, indeed, the case, as the midyear economic statement showed in December, that that is where the budget was. At that time, we were already in that position and that's where we were going. I can tell you that the reason we were in a position of having already brought the budget back to balance and being on the way to that surplus was the painstaking work our government did over six years.

This is an important issue. Our government has already demonstrated our ability after major crises to actually do the work and get budgets back into a positive position and ensure that we can get debt down when we're hit by a crisis, as we have been. I remember standing in this place last year when those opposite were encouraging us to spend and spend, and I came to this dispatch box and said, 'We must be careful, because we don't know what can happen in the future and the shocks that the Australian economy may be hit by.'

Well, that's exactly what happened. If we'd followed the prescription of those opposite we would have impaired the budget and we would not have been in the position that the Treasurer and I, and the government, have been in to extend the largest economic lifeline to this country we have ever seen. We were able to do that from a position of confidence, because we have spent six years ensuring that we got the budget under control, that we moved from a time when we inherited from the Labor Party a debt growing—

See this speech in context