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

You always know you've got the Australian Labor Party on the run when they make spurious points of order to try to stop the train of thought and the flow of the conversation that we on this side are seeking to have with the Australian people. The conversation that we are seeking to have with the Australian people is to highlight and juxtapose what the Australian Labor Party spends question time on in comparison to what the government spends question time on. You do the compare and contrast, you do the juxtaposition and you see that one side is fit and proper for purpose, namely, for the service of the Australian people.

Getting back to the point I was making, the young people of Australia today will be faced with paying off the deficit and debt left to them by a profligate Labor government during the 2007-13 period. This indebtedness is a result of Labor seeing a problem—immediate answer: throw money at it! Like they did with education—a huge increase in education expenditure with a huge decline in outcomes, confirming to everybody that expenditure does not necessarily relate to good outcomes.

Opposition senators interjecting—