Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House about how a budget surplus creates stability and certainty by increasing our economic resilience? Is the Prime Minister aware of the consequences of alternative approaches to the budget?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby for her question and for her support, along with all of those on this side of the House and those who have been part of this government since we were first elected six years ago. I thank them for their commitment, their discipline and their sound-mindedness in backing policies that have ensured that in this year we are bringing the budget back to surplus.

A surplus is not an end in itself. A surplus is a means to an end. It is ensuring record spending on infrastructure in modern times and record spending on health and education, and is delivering tax relief to Australians. It is ensuring that we are building the budget again and have two per cent of our GDP being spent on our defence forces. We are doing all of those things, and at the same time we are bringing the budget back to surplus, a surplus that means Australians can have confidence that we can meet the uncertainties that are ahead.

How long those uncertainties will be present no-one can really know, and that's why it's important that you have a government that knows how to be stable and certain, doesn't jump, doesn't lose its nerve and actually can maintain its discipline and not engage in the thoughtless, reckless, ill-considered policies that we saw from Labor when they were last in government and that Australians are still paying for today. We were able to bring the budget back into surplus by getting expenditure under control.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Moreton is now warned.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We did it patiently and we did it year in and year out, and it's taken us six years to do that through that patience. It's been done through conservative budgeting, because there's a big difference.

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Isaacs is warned.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On this side of the House, when we have framed budgets, we have adopted conservative forecasts, particularly when it comes to issues of commodity prices. We revised our commodity price forecasts down, particularly for iron ore, which we revised down to $55 a tonne. When prices excelled way above that over that period of time, we maintained those conservative forecasts because we knew that you couldn't turn your budget into a speculator when it came to iron ore prices.

That is in stark contrast to what the member for Rankin's old boss and mentor did when he locked in iron ore prices at $180 a tonne and then spent all the money that went with that fanciful revenue and drove the budget deeper and deeper into deficit. We all remember the mining tax. It didn't raise any money, but they still spent it anyway. When you're looking for stable and certain budget management, people don't look to the Labor Party. They've learned from experience.