Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

of interjections that I am getting from the Labor party. The Labor senators do not want the people who are listening to this debate tonight to hear me pointing out that one year ago the Rudd government was left with a $22 billion surplus. And here we are, within 12 months, talking of, in Mr Rudd’s own words, a deficit. How can you blow $22 billion in 12 short months? I know how they ran up a debt of $96 billion in 13 years, because I was there and I saw the second half of it. I saw the ‘recession we had to have’.

I only mention these things because of what Senator Feeney and Senator Parry said—they encouraged me to assist in putting the record straight. When you compare Labor with Liberal, you have a $96 billion deficit by Labor and you have, after 11 years of hard work, a $22 billion surplus by the Liberals. It took us 11 years to pay off Labor’s $96 billion debt and convert that into a $22 billion surplus, but the Labor Party have blown it all in 12 short months. We are now going back into deficit.

How can you ever trust Labor with money? It is an old principle, Mr President. Look around the states. Every state in this country—apart from Western Australia, now run by a Liberal government—is owned by Labor, run by Labor, and now going into deficit, and they are doing the same thing in the federal parliament.

I am delighted to have been able to enter the debate for those people who do quite seriously listen to the debates at this time of night. It is important that we put on the record the real situation and not the Labor rhetoric.