Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I very solidly and earnestly and stridently support this motion put forward by the member for Menzies. The member for Bruce has just given us a five-minute dissertation and asked a few questions. There were no facts—I say this as he scurries out of the Federation Chamber—about his trillion-dollar debt claim. It is not $1 trillion of debt. It is nowhere near $1 trillion of debt. But we keep hearing it. We hear it from the Prime Minister. We hear it from the Treasurer. We just heard it from the member for Bruce.

We get asked: what have we got in return for the debt that has been incurred? I'll tell you what we have. We have many tens of thousands of Australians alive today because of the investment that we placed in making sure that during the COVID pandemic we kept Australians as safe as we could, as alive as we possibly could. Indeed, the member for Bruce mentioned JobKeeper, through which 700,000 jobs were saved. What was the alternative? We hear repeatedly members opposite talking about $1 trillion worth of debt and asking, 'What have we got in return?'

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