Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Minchin explained it to you but you refused to listen. It is not to your advantage to listen. The fact that Australian households have gone into debt by borrowing is because their ability to pay back those borrowings has increased. They can meet those debts because those borrowings are backed up by their net tangible assets—there is greater value in their households. And how has this come about? Through a growth economy. How has a growth economy come about? How has their confidence in the economy come about—a confidence that has allowed them to invest and borrow? It has come about by this government’s determination 10 years ago to lay the foundation stone for a reliable, steady economy, taking the boom-bust cycle out of the economy. And we did that from our very first budget.

Tomorrow we celebrate and commemorate this government’s 10 years in office. I would like to point out one landmark. Many will discuss the highlights of that period and some of the difficult decisions we had to make—some of the very hard and unpopular decisions. But one of the first things we did for the sake of the Australian economy was that we decided to make the hard decisions, not to blink, and to see them through, and that set the pattern for the party room and the government. In the 1996 budget we were faced with a $10 billion budget deficit and a $96 billion debt left by the previous government. From our first day in government, we had to turn that around. That was the foundation stone—we had to turn it around into a surplus budget, leading to the zero debt that we have today.

That was the foundation stone we built this economy on. By the way, we have gone to each election with that foundation stone and have gained the confidence of the people. More than anything else, that has been the hallmark of this government. And it all began in 1996, when we had the determination, after 13 years in opposition, to put down one of the toughest budgets known from any government.

We spent 13 years in opposition and we had an idea of exactly what we had to do and what we were going to do when we came to government. We did not just sit over there. Now you are into your 10th year without a plan, without a policy and without a determination. We knew exactly what we had to do when we came into government. The first thing we had to do was tackle the economy—the mess that we had been left with. Today we see, after 10 years in government, that Australian households have the confidence to borrow and take out debt because they know that their employment is in great demand, their wages have gone up, they are capable of meeting that debt and the economy will remain strong.