Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

It is not a case of what is it. It is a case, Senator, of where is it. Where is the Henry tax review? Why don’t you have the capacity to be transparent and open and table the document? Why are you hiding it? Where is it? Is it in the top shelf of Mr Swan’s desk? Whereabouts have you put it? Why can’t you be decisive and tell us when you are going to table it? Why do you lack the capacity to be decisive in the financial affairs of this nation? It is not as if you do not have the information. All you have to do is walk to Mr Swan’s office, pick it up and bring it in. It is as simple as that. But you do not want to do that—no, this is too complicated. So we have to sit back here, while there is this veil of competence that you are in some way in control of where this nation is going, when the debt of this nation is just blowing out of the water and when you make statements asking, ‘How will you find $3.2 billion?’

Well, I put it back to you: how are you going to find the interest expense on your debt? If you are worried about $3.2 billion, then there are a lot of things out there that we should be concerned about. There are a lot of things that this nation is going to have a problem with if you, by your own statements, say that that is a problem. That makes Australians very concerned. The juxtaposition that you have the gall to talk about $3.2 billion of the coalition’s costings on our environmental policy—