David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Government spending is not something that you can turn around at the click of a finger. Think of a large oil tanker at full steam in the open seas. If you decide you want to turn around because you are going in the wrong direction, you cannot just turn it around on a dime. It takes something like 10 kilometres to actually stop a large oil tanker. It keeps on going for a long time even though it is in reverse. That is an analogy of what we are facing with debt. The previous Labor government set us on the debt trajectory that is going to take a long time to turn around. It is not an easy thing to do. We can put it into reverse, we can turn the thrusters on backwards but it is still going to keep on going for many kilometres before we can even stop.