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

As is the wont of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate—the worst finance minister Australia has ever had—and the Australian Labor Party, they seek to take words out of context. In the courtyard, the Prime Minister gave a media conference and, during the course of that conference, he indicated the debt trajectory that the former finance minister left this country and the coalition to fix up to protect future generations. The debt trajectory that Senator Wong and her colleagues had the Australian budget on would have seen a debt trajectory way above that which we are now looking at. It was in that context that he said that a substantial decline from Labor's trajectory to what it current is—