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

Senator Cameron says that nobody believes us. But do you know what? I suspect that even the people voting for the Labor Party know that the Labor Party do not know how to manage money. Here we are having to borrow $1 billion a month in order to just pay the interest on their debt. Do you know what $1 billion a month would pay for? It would pay for 47,719 hip replacements. It would pay for 49,371 knee replacements. And it would for 371,885 cataract surgeries. Instead, what do we have to do? We have to pay it every month. We have to borrow a billion dollars every month and spend it just on the interest on Labor's credit card bill. We could spend that money on so many better things if only we did not have all of this Labor debt to deal with. It is very important that we get the budget back under control so that in the future we can fund these important health services even better than we are now.