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

It is always interesting to go back over what Mr Hockey has said from day to day. It is always a new the surprise about what he is going to come up with on each day. In May this year he committed the opposition to delivering a surplus perhaps even earlier than 2012-13. In May he said they would deliver it earlier and then in June he said theirs would be a bigger surplus—'We'll deliver a bigger surplus; no doubt about that!' And then on Friday, 'No, actually we're going to run down the surplus to pay for the tax cuts because we haven't worked out how we're going to cost them.' So the opposition were going to do it earlier, then they were going to have a bigger surplus, now they are going to have a smaller surplus because they will not do the work to find the savings to cost the tax cuts to protect the surplus. They simply will not do the work; they are completely fiscally irresponsible. (Time expired.)