QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for Finance, Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Women, Minister for Government Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (14:02): I thank Senator Chandler for the question. If she is concerned about the projections for the debt in this budget, she must have been extremely concerned when they forecast hitting $1.2 trillion in their final budget.

When they were last in government, they forecast an increasing debt burden. They doubled the debt before the pandemic hit. They did nothing to pay down the debt.

I know they like to pretend that everything is someone else's problem. We've seen that. That's the way they operate.

We inherited $1 trillion of debt from those opposite. We have consistently lowered it. Again in this budget, debt is lower in every year of the forward estimates compared to what we inherited and, as a share of the economy, growth of net debt is and will remain lower than we inherited.

(Time expired) The PRESIDENT: Senator Chandler, second supplementary?