Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Not only did Labor leave the budget in a mess with a $30 billion and growing deficit, they also left us with a whole series of problems where they knew there was an inevitable cost attached to them and they did not make provision for it in the budget. Senator Wong knows exactly what I am talking about. Not only did they recklessly and irresponsibly force the Reserve Bank to deplete the reserve fund, which was arguably done at the worst possible time, we also had Senator Wong sneakily—in the shadow of the night, in the shadow of the election—impose a 14,500 job cut on the Public Service without making any provision to fund the redundancies that would come with it. That is another couple of hundred million dollars that they did not provide for. Of course we have also had offshore processing on Nauru and Manus. No money from 31 December 2013—no money! (Time expired)