MR SPEAKER, old mate, may I present this budget to the House? I do so, mindful of my responsibilities not only for the Australian economy and the 20 million people who live from it, but also for hold their seats later this year.
And, Mr Speaker, let me say, I think I've done it.
This is a budget that will fill the pockets of millions of voters with money, and raise interest rates again.
This was a tough one, Mr Speaker. You know what John Howard is we're 200 miles behind in the polls.
If I'd let him have his way, months. And with the cellar as full of money as it is, it was going to be hard to stop him.
But you get lucky in this game sometimes, don't you?
First, we had Glenn Stevens, our new Reserve Bank governor, read us the Riot before the election if it had to. You didn't have to be too smart to know that he was talking about the budget. I don't normally like governors telling me what to do, but I did send Glenn a box of chocolates after that one.
would only make Australians worse off.
As you can imagine, Mr Speaker, I took a very serious view of that leak. I sent Ken two boxes of chocolates one for himself, and one for the guy who leaked the speech.
the mark on both scores. We are handing out heaps of money $5.6 billion of tax cuts next year, and $6.
4 billion of new spending. That's $12 billion of lollies I will be giving away in the election year, and $16 billion the year after. The old boy went rolling around the carpet with glee when I told him that.
And yet, Mr Speaker, after giving away all that money, I still end up with a surplus of $10.6 billion. And being a numerate fellow, you might recall that that's exactly the surplus for 2007-08 we pencilled in a year ago.
And you might be wondering how second half of last year, and another $12 billion now, and still end up with the number we first thought of.
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