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

He thought that a target of 1.5 per cent of GDP was really the measure of the individual as Treasurer. That is what he said. And here were we, a new opposition, thinking, 'How pathetic were we!' We did not know that you were not actually meant to work harder. In fact, Wayne Swan said it was actually pretty easy to get a bigger budget surplus than we had. So we thought that we would just have to sit back and learn from the master about how budgets really should be run.

I think all of Australia learnt as a result of the 2008-09 budget that what is in the budget speech and the budget papers when referencing a surplus—or a deficit, for that matter—is not actually an outcome; it is a forecast. The Australian people got into the habit of assuming that a forecast in the budget was as good as gold, because when the Howard-Costello government was in office those forecasts were met and often exceeded in terms of the size of the budget surplus. So Australians had got into the habit of being able to rely on the figures in the budget speech on budget night. The Australian people have learnt—

Government senators interjecting—