Mark Arbib (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Government Service Delivery) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection. He is having a surplus, so we heard this morning. We all know that this was the most difficult budget to frame since the Great Depression. The budget deficit was caused primarily by our revenue almost going off a cliff, the result of the global recession and the ending of the mining boom. For weeks now I have been asking coalition MPs to explain how they would meet this revenue shortfall, how they would meet this collapse. A number of times, coalition MPs have put forward the figure that the coalition debt would only be $20 billion less than our borrowing. Tomorrow night, they will have to answer that charge. The evidence so far is that they will struggle. They will struggle primarily because they are confused. They cannot even get their own facts straight. Let us go back a week to 7 May. The shadow minister for small business, independent contractors, tourism and the arts was on Sky Agenda and was asked what level of debt he thought was acceptable. This is what he said:

I mean this false notion that Labor puts forward that under the Coalition, debt would be only $20 billion less is just absolutely farcical.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I turned on Sunrise and there was his boss, shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey, and this was his response to a question from David Koch:

David Koch: How much debt would you support and how big a deficit would you support?

Joe Hockey, the member for North Sydney: Our deficit would be smaller. I will give you a figure as a starting point—at least $25 billion smaller.

What was absolutely farcical last week is now coalition policy this week. He has admitted it. Well, he has sort of admitted it because straight after the shadow Treasurer came out, out came the Leader of the Opposition. It was about 20 minutes later when he was asked a very similar question. Let us hear what he said:

Malcolm Turnbull: The reality is … if we had been in government, the debt would be much lower.

          …            …            …

David Speers: But you can’t say why.

Malcolm Turnbull: Well, no, you can’t. I mean, you could sit down and work out a model but, as we’ve seen with each of these financial models, each assumption becomes fairly subjective.

That was the Leader of the Opposition this morning, 20 minutes after the shadow Treasurer.

As I have said, the truth is coming like a freight train. The global recession has meant that companies are just not making the profits that they used to make. Therefore they are not paying the same tax that they used to. There is currently a $23 billion write-down in 2008-09. It is the largest one-year downgrade revision in government receipts since the Depression. In 2009-10, it is a $49 billion write-down in tax receipts. The total write-down over four years is $210 billion. These downgrades have made a budget deficit in Australia inevitable. They are also responsible for two-thirds of the deterioration in our budget position since the last budget was delivered.

So tomorrow night these are the questions for the member for Wentworth: what would the deficit be if the Liberals were in government? If they claim they would have a smaller deficit than the government, what services will they cut? What programs will they cut? What jobs will they cut? If they are not going to cut, what taxes will they raise?