Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When you talk of so-called 'black holes', you need look no further than the $70 billion of unfunded promises of those opposite. This Labor government has been well prepared to honour its charter of budget honesty, and the Labor Party, as that government, is honouring that charter.

Let us take a look at the facts, which are that government spending under this government is projected to fall to just 23.5 per cent of GDP in 2012-13 and remain there across into the forward estimates. This would be the longest sustained run of payments below 24 per cent of GDP since the early 1980s. That is the kind of thing that those opposite should have been doing when they were in government, when there was room in the economy during the last mining boom to put that money away. But, sadly, I think those opposite squandered much of the last mining boom, and that is leaving the tough decisions for today. But we are getting on with the job of making those tough decisions. We have standards, and this Australian community expects those standards to be met—standards that are really a lot higher than accepting, as the minister highlighted today, a catering company's costings on Nauru or, for that matter, the costings done during the last budget, which did not meet audit standards despite the fact that shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey repeatedly claimed that those dodgy costings were in fact an audit.

So let us take a look at the facts about some of those things that are being promulgated by those opposite and in the media—things like saying that our dental care is uncosted. They have been saying things like, 'It's $4 billion over two years.' It is $4 billion over six years, and it also replaces a different scheme, so it is simply not new expenditure being added to the books. So those opposite cannot continue just to make things up as they have done this question time about the fiscal responsibility of this government. They have no idea where their figures are coming from and no basis for such absurd figures, but what has been well accepted is the $70 billion black hole of those opposite. That is the real question that this chamber and the Australian people need to deal with—the fact that those opposite have simply made up their allegations about the state of the budget.

But what I know is that what this government has done is that, while we were managing the global financial crisis, we still got on with the job of important social reforms in this country like the biggest increase in the pension in its 100-year history, something that the opposition did not deliver and could not deliver even at the height of the last mining boom. So you did not put the money away and you did not give it to the people that needed it. As I say, it is all about priorities, and those opposite do not have a decent set of priorities to put forward to the Australian people.

We will continue to take a robust and solid approach to our budget. You will see from Treasury at each budget update that we have costed and laid out figures there to be judged. So it is laughable for those opposite to be hanging the whole of their question time discussion around this debate, because you do not have a leg to stand on. What you are putting forward is simply not credible. On the other hand, we know that Joe Hockey announced his $70 billion budget crater on breakfast television, not in audited reports or in budget figures. His so-called auditors were found to be in breach of professional standards, and he still refuses to explain how he would fund any policies, except for the explanation that the company tax rate would indeed be jacked up. So I think that this question time the coalition have squandered their questions merely because they continue to go backwards.