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

I am pleased to report to the Senate that Operation Budget Repair is progressing well. One budget measure at a time, step by step, we are cleaning up the budget mess that Labor left behind. This week it is likely that we will even be able to deal with one of the outstanding measures of Labor's last budget, because Labor is now in agreement when it comes to reversing the second round of income tax cuts linked to the carbon tax. We have Operation Sovereign Borders to clean up Labor's mess at the border; we have Operation Budget Repair to clean up Labor's mess with the budget. The recent interaction between both of those operations is because, under Labor, when they lost control of our borders, when they lost control of our budget, they imposed $11 billion worth of budget blowouts on Australian taxpayers. Australian taxpayers were forced to fork out more than $11 billion more than they should have because Labor lost control of the borders.

As a result of our successful efforts to stop the boats, in 2015-16 alone, in this year's budget alone, we have been able to save half a billion dollars in spending that otherwise would have had to be incurred. Operation Sovereign Borders is supporting Operation Budget Repair—unlike Labor, which was taking government spending as a share of GDP under the worst finance minister in the history of the Commonwealth to in excess of 30 per cent, we have—