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

I somehow do not think Senator Sinodinos was laughing then. But, anyway, we will come to that point. We have laid out our plans in our budget. We found $100 billion worth of savings over a number of budgets, and we have laid out our plans, including what we will cut in order to fund things.

Senator Cormann interjecting—

But of course the alternative approach—and I am surprised that Senator Cormann is interjecting, because it is embarrassing as a member of the economic team on the other side—is to do what the opposition is doing, which is to try and hide your $70 billion black hole, not tell anybody what your budget position is, not tell anybody what you are going to cut, not tell anybody how you are going to fund anything and certainly not do any proper costings. So what we have seen is Mr Robb and Mr Hockey trying to hide from the Australian people the true position of what the budget would look like under Tony Abbott. And, because they are refusing to tell anybody, we thought we would give them a helping hand. So I released yesterday what the 2012-13 budget would look like under Tony Abbott: a $9 billion deficit.