Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The government has an unfortunate habit of saying one thing but doing the opposite, and we see in this budget the very same thing. I'd like to remind the minister that the government has presided over a doubling of the debt before the pandemic hit, despite saying that they were going to get the debt under control and have a surplus in their first budget—that was back in 2014. They've never delivered a surplus, and the budget is in deficit for as far as the eye can see.

The government was elected on a promise of getting the budget under control, but clearly it's no longer under control. It's out of control. Both net debt and gross debt have doubled, and that was before the pandemic hit. Does the gross debt or the net debt, Minister, peak in dollar terms at all over the medium term; and what is the government's plan to fix this?

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