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

My question is to the Treasurer. A few weeks ago while standing next to the Treasurer the Finance Minister said, 'We are taking responsibility and we will stand by how we perform against our forecasts.' Will the Treasurer be taking responsibility for his government's performance in his upcoming budget update or will the Treasurer be blaming a revenue problem, Labor, or both?

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

I will be blaming both, because Labor is responsible.

Mr Champion interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Wakefield has gone too far and will leave under 94(a).

The member for Wakefield then left the chamber—

A government member: Swanny has gone pale.

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

I look at old Swanny up there, and he is shaking his head at the behaviour of the member for McMahon—and I can understand why, Swanny. The best thing about the member for McMahon is that he makes Swanny look good. That is the best thing about him.

Of course, the Labor Party promise surpluses. In fact, it was the member for McMahon who stood at this dispatch box with a great history of commitments. I have been waiting all week for questions on fuel. He was the man who invented Fuelwatch. He was going to watch it, but the problem was it collapsed. Then he was worried about grocery prices. He invented GroceryWatch, but then GroceryWatch collapsed.

Of course there were a few other collapses when he was the minister—like Timbercorp, a few other advisory businesses, Great Southern; a whole lot of them. And then there was the collapse of border security. That happened under him as well. How many people came in? Twenty-five thousand people came in on boats when this man, the member for McMahon, was the Minister for Immigration—25,000 people came in on boats, unlawfully, when he was the Minister for Immigration. Just to cap it all off, for the brief period that he was the Treasurer of Australia, after the member for Lilley decided to resign—I will give him that; he decided to resign—the member for McMahon oversaw an increase in the budget deficit in just a few weeks from $18 billion to $30 billion. One of the problems was that Labor committed to years of growing expenditure at an annual increase in excess of three per cent—for years and years and years. They did that on the back of promised revenue that never turned up—like the mining tax. The mining tax was a great success—another Labor invention! Who on earth would come up with a tax that raises no money—zero? Only the Labor Party. They said there would be rivers of gold, because the member for Lilley based his forecast of an $18 billion deficit on the back of iron ore prices twice as high as they are today. The member for McMahon had iron ore prices at over $100 a tonne, and today they are $60 a tonne. We will be fixing up Labor's mess for decades to come.