Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

We are going to be in a position I think for this debate to be concluded soon, subject to the government not adding any more surprises to this legislation. I want to make a few points about the opposition's position and about this debate.

We will be supporting the Greens amendment in relation to transparency. We do not think it actually adds anything. We think the amendment really simply consolidates information that is already on the public record and can be found by a sensible perusal of the budget papers, the website of the Australian Office of Financial Management or the monthly financial statements issued by the finance minister, which are also available on the web. So while we will support this amendment, we do not support a no debt limit position.

This debate has demonstrated a number of enormous hypocritical turnarounds, reversals of position. The government that was the party of no debt has become the party of no debt limit. The party that described the Greens as the economic fringe dwellers has now made the Greens its trusted economic partners on debt management. The party that told everybody all around the country that Australia was drowning in debt now wants to add to Australia's debt. It has done it already through blowing out the deficit this year through making a range of decisions but it does not want to tell people what they are. Just as importantly, it wants more debt down the track to finance infrastructure that it is not prepared to front up about. So a country that was drowning in debt is now going to get more debt, according to what ministers are saying.

The central proposition from the government seems to be that Labor debt is bad and coalition debt is good. That is what this all comes down to: Labor debt is bad; coalition debt is good. That is the only explanation for the hypocritical U-turn that we have seen from those opposite, who once came in here and went up hill and down dale across Australia railing for hours that debt was bad. They are now coming in here saying: 'We don't want a debt limit. We're also adding to debt, but we're not going to tell you the detail of those decisions until much later.'

We said we would take the responsible approach to this debate and we have. I think Australians will see this as yet another example of a government that said one thing before an election and another thing afterwards. The professed self-styled warriors against debt now come in here and say, 'We want no limit on the amount of public debt that we can take on.' That is the reality and yet another example in the short time this government have been in place that they are absolutely not the government that they said they would be.