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

You are with me and that is the main thing, Senator Wong. But it now seems so farcical to remember him saying, 'I'm often accused of being an economic conservative. It's a badge I wear with pride.'

Senator Wong interjecting—

See, she likes it. The very sad thing is that too many people believed Mr Rudd. Too many people believed that the Australian Labor Party had learnt the lessons of the past—that it was a bipartisan commitment to balanced budgets, to living within your means, to economic conservatism. That is what the Australian public believed. Mr Rudd was guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct. He was elected in effect on the back of a lie. We know Ms Gillard was elected on the back of a lie—that she would not introduce a carbon tax—but the lie that Mr Rudd put forward was no less significant: that he would be an economic conservative, that he would preside over balanced budgets, that he would not rack up massive debt as previous Labor governments had.

So the election came and went, Mr Rudd became Prime Minister and Mr Swan became Treasurer. They were talking a good game, you have got to say. In his very first budget Mr Swan said, 'We're budgeting for a surplus of $21.7 billion in 2008-09, 1.8 per cent of GDP, the largest budget surplus as a share of GDP in nearly a decade.' No. It did not come to pass. It reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that what is in a budget speech, what is in a budget paper when it forecasts a surplus, when it forecasts a lessening of debt, or when it forecasts a smaller budget deficit than the year before, is a forecast—it is nothing more than that.

The global financial crisis came along. It is such an unlucky government, this one: if it is not one thing, it is another! So we had the global financial crisis. If you believe the Australian Labor Party it was the first time in human history that there had ever been economic uncertainty; it was the first time in human history that a government had ever faced significant external shocks and it was of such magnitude that it would not matter what happened—