George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

At least we have been consistent on this issue unlike the Labor Party, which undertook during the election campaign that it would support this budget saving measure, but now, having lost the election, comes back into this chamber threatening to block this budget savings measure. But we will hear more about that later in the week, Senator Cormann, when we debate the relevant budget measures.

The sad reality is that, because of the size of the debt and deficit that we inherited some three years ago when we came into office in September 2013, hard choices had to be made to get the budget under control. So what the government did, particularly in the 2014 budget, was it identified those areas of the government activities where economies could be made and this was one of them.