Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

GALLAGHER (—) (): I'd just like to make a few comments about the government's latest desperate attempt to launch a lame new scare campaign. We saw it yesterday, with the finance minister issuing numbers from the Liberal Party's costing of Labor Party commitments—what could possibly go wrong there?—and all the bluster around that.

I just want to make it clear that Labor will not be taking any lectures on fiscal responsibility from the Morrison government. We're not going to be lectured by finance ministers and treasurers who have delivered a trillion dollars of debt and eight consecutive budget deficits after promising surplus budgets in the first year and every year after that. When you look at the facts of this government's budget management, you can see why we won't be taking lectures. They're the second-highest-taxing government in the last 30 years—trumped only by the Howard government, I might add. They hid $16 billion in the budget, to be rolled out at election time. They wasted and rorted billions and billions of dollars through various funds that they've established to buy votes; there were 21 slush funds set up in the last budget alone. They spent $1 billion in government advertising; they can always find a bit of spare coin for that. Then there are the billions in costs wasted on dumping the French submarine contract; we know that's about $2.4 billion, with more to come. And there's $19.7 billion going in JobKeeper to companies that actually increased their revenue during the pandemic.

This is the legacy of this government. No wonder they're desperately out there trying to stir up fear and using misinformation and disinformation to try and distract from their own division, incompetence and COVID complacency.