Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory) (17:23): I rise to contribute to the debate on this matter of public importance. It is difficult to know where to start, because there were about 27 conflicting messages from Senator Lines about what will be in this budget. But it was instructive, and Senator Lines gave us a glimpse of where she and the Labor Party are up to with their budget critique. The Labor Party's critique is now seriously flagging and running out of steam. Senator Lines, like her fearless leader, Mr Shorten, is running out of ideas and critique and really has nothing positive to say. We heard about this 'year of ideas', that the opposition would present something to the Australian people about what they would do to fix the mess they left this country in. So far, we have heard nothing. When you have no ideas, when you have no plans and when you have no positive vision for the future, all you can do is have these flagging criticisms that change. We have heard it is going to be an 'unfair' budget, a budget about 'saving the Prime Minister', a 'boring' budget and a budget about 'saving the Treasurer'. Which is it? It will actually be a budget about the needs of the Australian people. It will be a budget about fixing the fiscal mess—that the vandals on the other side of this chamber left this country in—whilst seeking to grow jobs and support small business and families. That is what this budget will be about. That is why we see such a confused critique from Senator Lines, Bill Shorten and others in the Labor Party. They just do not know what to say. It is one of the reasons we are seeing the Australian people waking up to Mr Shorten. We are seeing his personal approval rating go through the floor. Do you know why? It is going through the floor because people have figured out that he does not stand for anything. People have figured out that it is very easy, when the government makes tough decisions, to be critical. It is very easy when you have made the mess—as Bill Shorten and the Labor Party did—to pretend it is not your fault, that it is the fault of the incoming government, which is trying to fix the mess you left. It is very easy to do that. Over the last 12 months we have seen this critique falling flat. That is because the Australian people do not believe the Labor Party can fix the mess they created. The Labor Party are showing no signs of it in opposition—and we certainly know what their record is like in government. It is interesting to hear Labor senators talking about budgets and promises. I am reminded of Mr Swan's promise to return the budget to surplus. Hundreds of times, he promised that the budget was coming back to surplus. Mr Shorten went further than that: he said they had already delivered a surplus. He went out to the Australian people and said, 'We have delivered a surplus.' That was not true. In fact, we were tens of billions of dollars in deficit—every year. Senator O'Sullivan: It hasn't been true for 26 years! Senator SESELJA: We do recall, Senator O'Sullivan, that wonderful footage of Wayne Swan when he was asked when the Labor Party had last delivered a surplus. He scratched around, spilled his water and broke his glass and then— Senator O'Sullivan: You were in primary school! Senator SESELJA: I may have just entered high school that year. I am pretty sure it was 1989 and that was my first year in high school. Wyatt Roy may not have been with us then, but I was in high school the last time the Labor Party delivered a surplus. Senator O'Sullivan was but a young man in that generation when the Labor Party last delivered a surplus. Politics is about choices: our plan for the future, our plan to grow the economy, to stimulate small business and support families, and to try to bring the budget under control. This is critical and this is an issue of fairness. This is a moral issue. Borrowing from your grandchildren or your children to fund your lifestyle—and the kind of profligate spending we saw under the Labor Party—is absolutely immoral. Senator Wright interjecting— Senator SESELJA: We have an interjection from the Greens. Have the Greens ever come up with a savings measure? They take the Labor Party view that a savings measure is, in fact, a new tax. They certainly do support new taxes—but it would not matter how many new taxes you came up with for the Greens, they would always find more ways of spending that money, more ways of throwing that money away. That is a moral issue. You would lumber generations to come with debt and deficit to pay for your lifestyle, to pay for ridiculous spending, to pay for the ridiculous schemes we saw under that Labor-Greens government. So we are not going to take lectures from the Greens. The Greens have the craziest of economic policies. They have no economic credibility. Senator O'Sullivan: They have never been in business. Senator SESELJA: Most Australians clearly believe that, because we see it in the level of support the Greens get across the country. It tends to be around eight to 10 per cent. So 90 per cent of Australians reject Greens policies, but unfortunately we have an opposition, the alternative party of government, which sometimes gets infected with the Greens' view of the world. We are certainly not going to be lectured to by the Labor Party on how to do budgets. We are not going to be lectured to by the Labor Party or their Greens coalition partners on how to fix the mess that they left us. But what we will do and what this budget will do—and I am confident that it will—is continue on the path of fiscal repair, which is critically important. We have to acknowledge that this is a serious issue. We cannot just let the deficits keep growing as they would have under Labor. Whilst doing that, we need to deliver the critical services, but we need to support jobs growth and support the economy. We need to support small business, and I am very confident that there will be excellent news for small business in this budget. We need to support families. We need to help them in all sorts of ways, including getting back into the workforce and supporting them in those choices. By doing that, we can fix the mess that we inherited and we can ensure that we have a prosperous future as a nation. That is our responsibility as a government, that is a responsibility that this government is up to and it is a responsibility that those opposite have comprehensively failed at, which is why they have no credibility when it comes to these sorts of discussions.