Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's always good to hear my good friend on the other side of the aisle, Senator Hughes, talking about numbers and economics, as if the Liberal Party are the only ones that can understand such concepts. But what they fail to understand is the very question that Senator Wong asked today of Senator Birmingham, who is meant to be the Minister for Finance in relation to page 37, These were very simple questions with respect to cuts to real wages. When you do look at the numbers and you do look at the figures in Budget Paper No. 1 on page 37, it is very clear that there is a cut from 1.8 down to 1.25. That is simple accounting. I don't know what you want to call it, Senator Hughes, but that is very simple maths when it comes to very clear cuts to real wages for Australian workers by this federal government, the Morrison Liberal-National government. Let's not forget that: black and white, on page 37. Yet they couldn't answer that simple question—three simple questions, in fact—that Senator Wong put to Senator Birmingham. It took a while for the government to finally acknowledge: yes, $1 trillion of debt. Who would have thought? I remember going to uni, studying economics, and never in my wildest dreams would I ever have imagined being in this place confronted with $1 trillion of debt and growing.