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

Thank you, Senator Mason. At that time, I was in a legal practice and I had a lot to do with small business people. They were paying the banks 23 per cent. The banks were not lending, so they were paying private lenders 28 per cent to keep their businesses going. That was Labor’s mismanagement of the economy. You simply cannot trust Labor with money.

I draw the comparison: we took over government in 1996 with a $96 billion deficit. Over a period of 11 years and a lot of hard work with a lot of very good management of money, we paid off Labor’s debt after about seven years and then we started putting money aside. As Senator Parry said, we put it under the mattress. We started putting the surpluses away for the future of Australia. When we left office we left this government a $22 billion surplus. Within 12 short months that $22 billion surplus has now turned into what appears to be a deficit.