Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

What the honourable senator has outlined is the factual circumstance of the Australian economy. Does that mean that there are not problems on the horizon? Of course not. That is where the most failed finance minister in Australian history deliberately seeks to obfuscate and convince the Australian people that she who delivered the six biggest budget deficits in Australian history somehow has the solutions to Australia's problems. The simple fact is that the Australian Labor Party, not content with delivering us the six highest deficits, left us on a trajectory to even higher deficits. Our task now is to try to reduce those even higher deficits down lower. So, do we have a huge economic budget task ahead of us? Yes, we do.

What makes that task more difficult is that the Australian Labor Party went to the last election and said to the Australian people, hand on heart, 'Believe us: we are economically responsible and we will take $5 billion worth of cuts,' and then, when we said, 'We will match that $5 billion worth of cuts exactly,' and put that to the parliament after the election, do you know what they did, Mr President? To a man and woman, each and every one of them, lemming like, did what Mr Shorten told them to do and voted against their own savings policies that they had taken to the Australian people. That is the economic credibility of the Australian Labor Party, and there is no better exemplar of that than the failed finance minister herself. (Time expired)