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

The previous Labor government has exposed Australia to excessive levels of spending. Spending grew by way too much under the previous government—by 17 per cent above inflation in their first two years in government. But later in their period in government they started to say, 'Well, revenue is falling, and the reason we have all these deficits is because revenue is now lower than what we thought it would be.' And to a degree that was true, because the terms of trade were starting to come down. But the problem is that at that time, instead of adjusting spending growth moving forward, Labor decided to ramp up spending by more, permanently, into the future. In the first year outside the final published Labor budget forward estimates, Labor increased spending by a massive six per cent above inflation—when they said that their fiscal rule was somehow to constrain spending growth to two per cent. We were on a trajectory of government spending well in excess of 30 per cent as a share of the economy when our revenue is much lower than that. (Time expired)