Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The motion we are debating reads:

That the Senate condemns the Abbott Government for its litany of broken promises which are hurting low- and middle-income earners, harming the economy, damaging business and consumer confidence, costing jobs, undermining fairness, and changing Australia for the worse.

The only thing I can say is what abject hypocrisy this motion demonstrates. Australia is not in the kind of condition that I know many of the people who voted for the coalition government in 2013 would have liked it to be in is not because of the actions of the coalition government but because of the vandalistic actions of those who sit opposite. One of the things that those opposite will fail to tell you is that when they came into government in 2007 they inherited a $60 billion surplus—there was $60 billion in the bank. That surplus was there so that the Australian public could be confident that when something needed to be done, when some major infrastructure project came along—