Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer inform the House what the government is doing to fix the budget and why? What are the alternate approaches to sound budgetary management?

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Reid for question and note that he is asking a question about the details of the budget—and we welcome that. As someone who has worked in business and has been at the coalface of business activity, particularly in Western Sydney, he knows how important it is for the country to live within its means, as it is important for business and individuals to live within their means. Of course, under the trajectory that we inherited, of deficit and debt under Labor, we were facing $667 billion of debt within a decade. That is $25,000 for every man, woman and child in debt—government debt—in a decade's time, and we would be paying $3 billion a month interest—70 of which would be going overseas. Just as we are paying a billion dollars a month interest now on the debt that Labor accrued, we now send $700 million of that each month to people overseas that we had borrowed money from. So it is money that leaves Australia every month.

There is no sense of regret or even a sense of apology from our political opponents about this. The member for Lilley said that it was a 'ruinous' budget situation. In a moment of clarity in his discussions with Bob Carr he said the state of the budget 'is ruinous'. But, of course, now that they are in opposition they deny any responsibility. And no-one does that more than the member for Watson, who went out again this morning and said: 'We had to keep within our two per cent cap on spending growth that we put in place.'

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He said, 'We had to keep within our two per cent cap on spending growth.' The only problem is they did not. He said, 'We had to', but they did not. Of course, the year that he misses out on is the year when Labor increased spending by more than 10 per cent. They just went for the credit card. They smoked the Amex in just one year and then they said, 'We're do-gooders; don't worry. It is all okay.' But the problem was that the locked in 3.7 per cent in increasing expenditure over the next few years.

The member for Watson is like this little dog that I got for the family before Christmas. In training the dog, I keep saying, 'Don't run out on the street into the traffic.' That is what the member for Watson keeps doing—he keeps going out into the traffic and then we have to pull him back and point out that it is, in fact, very dangerous for him to do that, because he gets his numbers wrong. Just as he got his numbers wrong on every single occasion in the past he keeps doing it. So my best advice is: stay off the road and out of the traffic.