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

The Labor Party is really getting desperate when they get Senator Conroy to ask questions about the budget and the economy. What I would say to Senator Conroy is that the policy decisions taken by the government improve the bottom budget bottom line by $1.7 billion over the forward estimates. The policy decisions taken by the government on the spending side of the budget improve the budget bottom line by $3 billion.

The truth of the matter is that everybody across Australia knows that we have faced additional global economic headwinds. The truth of the matter is that we have had to deal with significant falls in our terms of trade. The truth of the matter is that the price we can achieve in global markets for our key commodity exports like iron ore and coal has significantly dropped. That has had flow-on consequences on the revenue side of the budget because of circumstances outside of our control.

What is the government doing? We are implementing our plan for jobs and growth. We are implementing our plan to secure a successful transition from resource investment driven growth to broader drivers of growth, and we are implementing our plan to put our budget on a sustainable foundation for the future. We are doing that by controlling expenditure. We are doing that by putting—