Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I am not inviting speculation over there!

I only say to the Labor Party: you left Australia with a deficit-and-debt mess. You sure did—$123 billion of deficits over just four years; $667 billion of debt over 10 years! We are currently paying $1 billion a month in interest alone on the debt that Labor has left and 70 per cent of that goes directly overseas because that is repayment to the people who we borrowed the money from. And if nothing happens on the budget, if nothing is done—if the Labor Party policy of 'she'll be right; don't worry about that' continues—we are going to end up with a debt of $667 billion in 10 years' time, the equivalent of $25,000 for every man, woman and child in Australia. And we will be playing $3 billion a month in interest alone—interest alone! Three billion dollars a month just to finance the mess that was left by an incredibly bad Labor government.

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