Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Now that the government has accepted that it will not be able to legislate some of its harshest budget cuts, will the government now remove these completely from its midyear economic fiscal outlook? Or will future budget papers be based on a fabrication?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They talk about fabrications; what about the former Treasurer who stood up in this parliament and said:

The four years of surpluses I announce tonight …

I mean, really and truly, the former government was built on a fabrication. Their whole economic policy was built on a fabrication: the surplus that they knew our country needed and the surplus that they never came within cooee of delivering.

So, Madam Speaker, we are very pleased that a skerrick of responsibility, a moment of economic literacy, has penetrated into the dim minds of members opposite, and they have supported $2.7 billion—they have had a rare moment of economic lucidity—of savings today, and I thank them for that. The budget savings that we have not got today, we will keep trying to get tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that, because we are pledged to getting the budget back under control. We are pledged to ending Labor's debt and deficit disaster. We are pledged to ending the $123 billion of cumulative deficit, the $667 billion of projected debt, which the policies of members opposite were saddling our country with—$25,000 of debt hanging around the neck of every single man, woman and child; that is what members opposite left this country. We are pledged to fix this problem, and fix it we will.