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

They accumulated $191 billion in deficits. Their last budget left behind another $123 billion in projected deficits, and government debt was heading for $667 billion. We are forced to pay $1 billion a month in interest, just to service the debt that has been accumulated by the Labor Party. And remember, there was no government net debt in 2007; there was a $20 billion surplus. There was money in the bank. In the last year of the Howard government, the government was collecting more than $1 billion in net interest payments on the back of a positive net asset position.