Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate notes the Gillard Government’s $120 billion budget black hole.

As I rise to my feet, it occurs to me that I have spent my entire professional life either talking about Labor debt and deficit or helping to repay it. Essentially, my entire professional life has been spent cleaning up after the Australian Labor Party. I was working with the Greiner government, which inherited from Labor debt and deficit, and I should note in passing that the opposition leader for that entire period was none other than current Senator Bob Carr, who opposed each and every measure put forward to repay debt and get the budget back into balance. I worked for the Kennett government, which inherited debt and deficit, and the job was, again, to seek to repay that debt and get the budget back into balance—again without any assistance at any time from the Australian Labor Party. So, in 1996, when I found myself working for the then Treasurer, Peter Costello, it was, as Yogi Berra would say, 'Déjà vu all over again'. There was a $96 billion debt and a budget which was $12 billion in deficit, and we set about repaying the debt. Again, it was done without any assistance from the Australian Labor Party. In fact, the Labor Party opposed each and every measure put forward to get the budget back into surplus. It took us the best part of a decade to completely eliminate that $96 billion of Labor debt—the best part of a decade. It is easy to rack up these bills; it is much harder to pay them down. So successful were we in doing so and establishing what was widely accepted as a new and better fiscal paradigm that then opposition leader Mr Rudd was at pains to ape the Howard government—to present himself as a slightly younger, slightly funkier version of John Howard. He was essentially putting forward the proposition to the Australian people that it was safe to vote for the Australian Labor Party because it would be a status quo situation—that there was essentially no difference. Mr Rudd went to the extent of appearing in those television ads, which I am sure we all remember, where he put his hand on his heart and said, 'I'm often accused of being an economic conservative. It's a badge I wear with pride.' I see Senator Wong smiling.