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

As I was saying, our second budget will focus on jobs, on growth, on helping families, on putting Australia on a stronger foundation for the future, and on making sure that our expenditure growth is sustainable for the future and is sustainable for the medium to long term—because we inherited a situation from Labor where government spending was getting out of control; where debt was getting out of control. Under Labor, we were on a trajectory to government net debt of more than 100 per cent as a share of the economy within a few decades—I mean completely unsustainable. We are turning the situation around. As I said yesterday, we inherited from Labor a weakening economy, rising unemployment, and a budget position that was rapidly deteriorating. The economy is now strengthening, jobs growth is strengthening, and the budget position is improving and, of course, we will continue to work to improve the budget bottom line, and we will get the budget back to surplus as soon as possible.