Matt Thistlethwaite (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

You did. And we saw why, when they were analysed independently, because your auditors refused to give an unqualified audit of those figures. The reason they refused to give an unqualified audit was that the costings came up $11 billion short when it came to the crunch. Post the election we found that an $11 billion black hole existed in the costings. Imagine what it would have done to our rank under the sovereign fiscal responsibility index as judged by Stanford university if those opposite had been in government with an $11 billion black hole! They do not seem to have learnt any lessons from this foolish approach to the last election campaign because they are continuing to announce irresponsible, unfunded election commitments. Far be it from me to be critical of this, because finally others in our nation are beginning to wake up to this game of those opposite. I draw to the Senate's attention a quote from the editorial of the Daily Telegraph of 13 August 2011 when the Daily Telegraph editorialised:

The—

Liberals'—

hairy-chested approach would be more convincing ... if Hockey and his mates had the gumption to wield their razors against wasteful and irresponsible promises made by their leader.

But, then again, there are many in the Liberal Party who know that their leader has no idea of fiscal responsibility and economic management. I again draw the Senate's attention to a quote from none other than a former Leader of the Liberal Party, John Hewson, who, on 24 May 2010, when speaking of the Leader of the Opposition, said:

Tony is genuinely innumerate. He has no interest in economics and no feeling for it.

And those opposite seek to criticise us for our economic management. They cannot go on like this forever, with these announcements of irresponsible spending commitments and the claim that they will return the budget to surplus, because eventually they will have to say how they will do it. To date they have not. They just go around making these irresponsible spending commitments, but they will not come clean with the Australian public about how they will do it. However, some months ago we did find out from a leaked shadow cabinet minute how they were going to balance the budget, despite the fact that they do not have and will not have the revenue from the minerals resource rent tax and despite the fact that they will have no revenue from carbon pricing. They will do it by cutting $70 billion worth of government outlays and services. There is a $70 billion black hole in the opposition's spending commitments—$70 billion! Senator Brandis said earlier that this was a misstatement; this was a lie.