Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I respect Senator Furner, but I disagree with him when he talks about the record of the previous government in managing debt. Part of the reason we have such a big focus on debt in Australia is precisely that the debt did go off. Debt has gone up over the last six years. The whole purpose of the debt limit being introduced in 2008, as I understand it, was to assure people that it would only go to a certain level and not beyond that. The fact that the then government had to come back to the parliament a number of times to raise the limit drew attention to the fact that the debt kept growing. So the limit in itself became, not intentionally but almost by accident, a target—a target that was met and then exceeded.

The whole debate that we have had about the $500 billion, I think, has now been put in its place by the measures we are talking about today by removing this ceiling, which is not the debate we need to have. The debate we need to have is over the quality of the measures that this government take to deal with increased deficits and debts. That is where the debate should be. That is where eminent economists like Ross Garnaut, Saul Eslake and others say the debate should be and that is where the debate will now be. It is very important to understand that this does not reduce the scrutiny of what might happen to debt over time; it increases the transparency of looking at debt and the reasons for the increase in debt. And, yes, it also potentially triggers a subdebate around the pros and cons of using debt for different purposes, and that is built into the transparency measures that the Greens have proposed here and to which the government have agreed. I think we are taking the economic debate several steps further.

In terms of budget policy, the debate should be on the quality of the measures, not on ceilings and limits per se. We will be increasing the transparency of the government's dealings on debt and I think that will be very important going forward. The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook will be released in the very near future and, along with that, a debt statement. So we do not have to wait very long for all of that to happen. The reason the MYEFO has taken some time to do, apart from anything else, is that we have also been waiting for the September quarter national accounts. They were delivered last Wednesday. Forecasts and parameters are being revised in the light of those forecasts. So in the MYEFO, we will lay out the full scale of what we inherited, the measures we have taken to date—