Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

We've inherited $1 trillion in debt and an ongoing $50 billion in structural deficits with not enough to show for it. The former government spent money on rorts and waste to bolster their electoral chances with nothing to show for it.

Our first budget in October uncovered those unlegislated zombie measures that were banked since 2016 and not going to progress; funding cliffs of programs that were ended purely to improve the forward estimates even though any government would continue with them; failure to provision for necessary funding issues like COVID-19; and, of course, let's remember the big save in their budget on robodebt. Remember when you pursued hundreds of thousands of Australians for debts they didn't owe to make sure your budget looked better than it was, and it backfired against the lives of those Australians but also in the settlement you had to pay to get out of it?