Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will Australia's gross government debt hit more than a trillion dollars next year?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's what it says in the budget. The interesting thing about that, from an opposition point of view, is that when we came to office we inherited that trillion dollars of debt. What we've been able to do because of our responsible economic management is—debt is down $177 billion this year compared to what those opposite left us with. And that's because we delivered two surpluses, which would have been absolutely unrecognisable to those opposite.

When we came to office the budget was already weighed down with a trillion dollars of debt in a budget which was absolutely chockers with rorts and waste, to which the shadow Treasurer had made a contribution. We've gone about making sure that we manage the budget in the most responsible way. We've found almost $100 billion in savings. We've banked most of the upward revisions to revenue, and, because of that, we've delivered the first two surpluses in almost two decades. We've shrunk the deficit this year as well, and we're making progress.

If those opposite really cared about debt, they wouldn't have left us with a trillion dollars of it. They wouldn't have left us a budget which was weighed down with rorts and waste. We inherited a big mess from those opposite and we've been cleaning it up. Because of our efforts, the budget bottom line over the years that we take responsibility for is $207 billion stronger than it was under those opposite, who promised a surplus in the first year and every year thereafter and went precisely none for nine when it came to surpluses. We've delivered two.

We understand that the task of responsible economic management and budget repair is ongoing. In every single one of our four budgets we've found savings, and people should expect that to be the case in the future, too, if we get the opportunity.