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

We have to remember that in 2007, Labor inherited a strong economy and a strong budget—no government net debt; a $20 billion surplus; more than $50 billion in Commonwealth net assets—the government was collecting more than $1 billion in net interest payments. And of course, after just six short years of Labor's bad financial mismanagement—Labor's wasted mismanagement—we are here, looking at $191 billion in deficits after Labor's first five budgets and $123 billion in projected deficits in Labor's last budget. But of course, whenever we got a budget from the Labor Party, we knew that it was not worth the paper it was written on—it was deteriorating within weeks. Just in the three years that Senator Wong was the finance minister—

Opposition senators interjecting—