James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. I hear the phrase 'comedy hour'. The debt of Queensland is not a laughing matter. Do you know what it is? It is an annual interest bill of $4 billion. People listening at home and fellow Queenslanders, Labor thinks that your $4 billion annual interest bill on a debt is going to hit $85 billion—would have hit $85 billion under Labor—is a laughing matter. The issue with debt is it means that when you are paying off the interest bill, you are not putting the money into public services, you are not putting money into schools and education. What we have got to do in Queensland like what we have got to do federally is make sure that we get the economy and the debt under control so we can put more money into the health system, so we can put more money into the education system. We can stop wasting money on government expenditure that is not needed.

In the final 10 years of Labor's reign—and it was a reign in Queensland—the Labor Party set themselves up as an almost one-party state, because sometimes my side of politics was not particularly flash at winning elections. Labor ran this one party state in Queensland where for the last 10 years government expenditure increased by an average of 8.9 per cent a year—8.9 per cent a year is how much it went up each year. From 2012 to 2013 and 2014, it increased by just 1.2 per cent a year.

We normally hear Labor talking about the impact on services. Let's talk about the dental waiting list. Let's talk about the money we put into services. How many people were on the dental waiting list when Labor were turfed out in 2012? I will tell you—here it is: 61,405 according to my notes. Do you know how many people are on the dental waiting list now? None; zero—there are no people on the dental waiting list.

Ambulance response times—down; things like that. Another hundred front-line staff—