Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

There was a time when those opposite cared about their economic credibility and cared about their fiscal credibility. Now you have got Mr Hockey running around promising surpluses but opposing savings, which, as you know, does not add up. We also have Mr Abbott, who we know has previously described economics as very 'boring'; and rather than talking about something that bores him like how you bring the budget back into the black and secure the future prosperity of the nation all he wants to do is run around and say, 'Where's the carbon price?' That is all he wants to talk about.

I think the Australian people are on to you. They know that the only reason you want to talk about the carbon price is that you have nothing to say on the budget, you have nothing to say about the jobs of Australians, you have nothing to say about how we bring the budget back into surplus and you have nothing to say about building the workforce for this nation's future.

If somehow the allegation is that we should have put the carbon price into this budget, as we have said on many occasions, we will account for the carbon price after it has been finalised in the first update post those decisions. That is what we have said, and we are no different in that to Mr Howard, who promised an emissions trading scheme, but never put it in his budget. Mr Howard talked about a GST in 1997 but did not put it into his budget for a couple of years. What we are doing is no different to what Mr Howard did. We will account for it. (Time expired)