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

I thank Senator Edwards for that question. In September last year the government inherited a deteriorating budget position from a Treasurer, Mr Swan, and from a Minister of Finance, Senator Wong, who had presided over a $107 billion deterioration in the budget bottom line in the three short years that she was the minister. We inherited a situation where there was $123 billion in projected deficits, where government debt was heading for $667 billion within a decade and growing and where we now have to pay $1 billion a month just on interest to service Labor's debt. Every one of the 10 million taxpayers across Australia has to spend $100 every month just on the interest to service Labor's debt. Our plan to repair the budget is in the May budget that we delivered a few months ago. I am pleased to report that we are making good progress, despite the best efforts of the Labor Party and the Greens. But we have some budget measures in front of us here in the Senate—social services related budget measures—where the Labor Party has said to us, 'We agree with those savings' and the Greens have said, 'We agree with this particular saving.' There are some savings Labor disagrees with; there are some savings the Greens disagree with. Instead of facilitating the efficient passage of all those things we agree with, Labor comes in and says, 'Oh, no, we have to continue to play procedural games. We're not in a hurry here to fix the budget mess we left behind. We're not in a hurry to get the things through where there is actual agreement. We want to force you to re-introduce all of those things, even though it will be exactly in the same form next time when we come around.'

We will be here a month later and we will have lost some more time. For what purpose? For no purpose whatsoever. So are going to be wasting more money for taxpayers; we are going to be slower in repairing the budget, because Labor—(Time expired)