Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Queensland government released their budget today. Because I was raised to find the good in everything, I want to express in my chamber how pleased I am to see the Queensland Labor government come to the party and deliver on a commitment to match the federal government's funding of $3.5 million for the establishment of a Holocaust museum in Brisbane. I had the pleasure of announcing the federal contribution to that on behalf of Ministers Tehan and Frydenberg a few months ago. It's great to see the state government come on board in circumstances where both the federal government and the Brisbane City Council team, led by Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner, are already such great supporters of this important project. It will educate young Queenslanders in particular about this important and tragic chapter of history and help make sure that something so horrific never happens again. But I'm sorry to say that that's where the good news in the Queensland budget stops.

Around four weeks ago Queensland had an election—an election that Queenslanders were asked to go to without the benefit of seeing the budget that had been due a few months earlier from Queensland Labor. During that election campaign, the Queensland Labor government promised that it would borrow $4 billion, on top of its existing $102 billion worth of state debt, and that was all that would be required to fund their spending promises and operational commitments. You'd expect that figure to be accurate; they have access to all the departmental data and Treasury modelling that are necessary to try to get that pretty close to right. Well, we're now four weeks down the road, and that promise has not even lasted for that period.