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

Senator, there are a number of points in your question. I am sorry: I do not know where you have those facts from. If you are referring to the spend-save position in the budget as announced, the net spend-save position delivered by this government is in fact a return to the budget of just over $5 billion. We have delivered restraint in real growth and expenditure on average of one per cent a year. The average for Mr Costello's last five budgets was in the order of 3.6 per cent a year and, as I referenced yesterday, the last time a government delivered this sort of spending restraint was in the 1980s. If the good senator cares about the surplus and cares about debt levels then he should be very concerned about the path Mr Abbott is going down: seeking to oppose budget savings measures. (Time expired)