Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I remind the Prime Minister of the promise she made at a public forum three days before the last election when asked about Labor's commitment to return the budget to surplus:

… failure is not an option here and we won't fail.

If the Australian public could not trust the Prime Minister to keep this fundamental pre-election promise, why should they trust her to keep any promise she has made since?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Deputy Leader for her question. It does seem to me, having watched the progress of question time, that one would be forgiven for wondering what is the difference between the old negative opposition and this supposed new look number. I think the answer is the colour of the Leader of the Opposition's tie. I also thank the Deputy Leader of the Opposition for verifying that those opposite are so concerned by the poor performance of their economic team that they are now swinging others in to try and hold the economic argument. I did think it was unfair when the deputy leader lost her job as shadow Treasurer and I thought that she would do a far better job. So I am glad she is back on the economic questions. However, unfortunately, on this economic question—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, I rise on two points of order. The first is the obvious point of order of relevance and the Prime Minister's weird personal attacks on the deputy leader. The second point of order is that the Prime Minister should not be commenting on either the shadow Treasurer's weight or the colour of the Leader of the Opposition Leader's tie. Of course that is a sexist statement and she should withdraw it.

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. The Prime Minister has the call.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. Thursday sense of humour. On the question that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition asked, let me be very clear in the answering of it. The opposition, we know, is full of climate change deniers. Now it is apparently full of global financial crisis deniers.

They are in denial of the facts about the federal budget and the circumstance of the global economy and the outworkings of the global financial crisis. What they are in particular denial about is revenue write-downs, which have become transparent recently, and the fact that the amount of revenue per unit of GDP is lower than was expected by Treasury and, indeed, is lower than at any time since the early 1990s. Treasury, using the normal economic models and the economic personnel that the Howard government relied on in office, did their best to project where revenue would be and the economy has not performed in accordance with those expectations in the generation of revenue.

That means that, as a government, you have a clear choice. You could seek to match those revenue write-downs with further budget cutbacks. That is a choice that would be available to you. I refer the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to the write-downs in MYEFO, for example, which were in the order of $4 billion this year. You could choose to cut $4 billion out of the budget to match that revenue write-down. The problem is that it would be a major risk for jobs and growth to take a policy position of matching those revenue write-downs with further savings. So that is not the policy position the government has taken. We are dealing with a real world with real facts and, most importantly of all, real consequences for Australian families and their ability to get and hold a job. We have elected to make sure we manage the economy to maximise the ability of Australians to have good work. (Time expired)