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

To be clear about what has occurred, I want to make a few comments before we vote on this. The Labor opposition very responsibly moved an amendment which was originally accepted by this Senate to increase the debt limit by $100 billion to $400 billion—a debt limit that evidence from Treasury and Finance estimates made clear would ensure plenty of space for this government until the next budget update. We also said that we would be prepared to look at additional increases provided the government was prepared to open the books and provide an update to the Australian people via the parliament as to the true state of the budget since they have been elected.

The government refused that, and the government that was the party of no debt has now become the party of no debt limit. This was the party that opposed the Australian Greens, that lectured us and the Australian people about how radical the Greens were and said they were watermelons—green on the outside, red on the inside were Senator Abetz's words—and economic fringe dwellers. Now the coalition have done a deal with the economic fringe dwellers to ensure that there is no debt limit in this nation. We do not support that position. We do want to behave as a responsible opposition, and that is why we have taken the steps we took to ensure that there was an increase before the current limit was reached. I note that those opposite refused to accept that very reasonable proposition and are now saying: 'We know before the election we said that the answer to debt wasn't more debt. Well, we don't believe that anymore. That's not our government's position. We do believe the answer is more. We believe now that, in fact, Labor debt is bad and coalition debt is good.' For that reason we will be opposing this report.