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

One of the biggest risks that we are facing as a country is the fact that the Labor Party has not learned from its past mistakes. The Labor Party has not learned from its past mistakes. People across Australia intuitively know that Labor cannot manage money. People across Australia know that, whenever Labor gets into government, it makes a mess of it, and it is important for the coalition to get back in to sort out Labor's fiscal mess—and so it is, of course, this time. Labor put Australia on an unsustainable, unaffordable, spending growth trajectory, taking government spending as a share of GDP to in excess of 30 per cent—in excess of an unprecedented 30 per cent.

This government is making the decisions necessary to get spending growth under control, and what is the Labor Party doing? The Labor Party, under the leadership of Bill Shorten, is still making unfunded promises. It is still making unfunded promises to the tune of about $57 billion. If Labor were in government right now, under policy settings that Bill Shorten has announced, the budget would be about $57 billion worse off. (Time expired)