Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Farrell, for that very important question. The government has delivered a highly responsible budget. It delivers the right outcomes for the current economic times. The government has stuck by very, very strict fiscal rules to get the budget back in the black as soon as possible after the global financial and economic crisis—and it has worked. We are back in surplus three years ahead of schedule, three years ahead of any other advanced economy in the world.

Let us look at net debt. Net debt will be halved. It is projected to peak at just 6.1 per cent of gross domestic product. Compare that to other advanced economies, where net debt is projected to peak at 93 per cent on average. Net debt in the rest of the advanced world is projected to peak at 15 times, on average, Australian net debt. The budget delivers the fastest fiscal consolidation since the 1960s. We have lower unemployment, higher economic growth and the lowest debt of any major advanced economy. In fact, many major advanced economies have no date at all as to when they will emerge from deficit. We brought this about by discipline. We have not allowed tax as a proportion of the total economy to go above the level we inherited from the previous government. Tax as a percentage of GDP is lower than that which we inherited from the former government. We have not allowed spending growth to go beyond a two per cent real increase until such time as the budget returns to surplus. We are not spending any of the revenue increase as a result of our stronger economy, which avoided a recession—unlike most of the other advanced economies—but we are allowing it to help drive the budget back into surplus early, and we have offset new spending by saving. We have delivered on the forward estimates aggregate savings— (Time expired)