Senator O'NEILL (New South Wales) (16:42): At the request of senator Gallagher, I move general business notice of motion No. 512: That the Senate notes that— (a) after six years in office, the economy is floundering on the Government’s watch; (b) Australians are struggling with stagnant wages, with wage growth stalling further; (c) net debt has more than doubled under this Government; (d) the Government does not have a plan to boost wages or growth in the economy; and (e) it is because of the Government’s failures that Australia meets the challenges and uncertainties of the bushfires and coronavirus from a position of weakness, not strength. There are so many people on the Labor side who would absolutely love to discuss this matter. So, even though there is considerable time, please take my short contribution only as a generosity to my colleagues, who have great things to say. There is so much wrong with this government. The gap between what the government say themselves about how good they are at managing the economy and what they're actually doing is like in a relationship where somebody promises that they're going to be a particular way and, bit by bit, you find out that they are not what they said they would be. That's exactly the case with this government. The content of the notice of motion that we're discussing today is to note these critical things: that after six years—and it is now seven years—in office, the economy is actually floundering on this government's watch. In absolute contrast to what it is that they put out there and claim day after day, week after week, year after year, like drips on a stone. People have had this oil poured into their ears and they've been inclined to believe it for a little while, but the truth is coming out. It's coming out that this economy is in great trouble because they are not the economic managers that they claim to be. We know that Australians are struggling with stagnant wages, with wage growth stalling further. That is the reality that's happening under this government. We know that net debt has more than doubled under this government and that the government doesn't have a plan to boost wages or grow the economy. It is because of this government's succession of failures that Australia meets the challenges and uncertainties of the bushfire summer that has just passed and the coronavirus from a position of economic weakness, not strength. That is what we are here to talk about this afternoon. In the language around debt that this government has inflicted on the nation over the years, they claim they are great economic managers. I decided that I would do what Australians do for their sources of information, because I can tell you that you cannot trust the Prime Minister. He is very loose with the truth. You cannot trust Mr Frydenberg, for example, who declared outright last year in his budget speech that we were 'back in black'. Not that we were going to be, but that Australia 'back in black' and 'back on track'. He was so confident in that, and so were the Liberal Party, in their masquerade, in their deception to the Australian people, that they decided they'd cash in by actually creating a product to improve their chances of fundraising for the election. They actually came up with this little official 'back in black' mug. It was a limited edition. They said: The 2019 Budget delivers the first surplus in more than a decade. Mark this event with the official Back in Black mug. The problem is that it's just not true. What they really should have put out was 'still in the red', because that was the reality at the time that this government was declaring to Australians, in April last year, that the accounts were back in black. This government has seen debt spiral. If we go back to 2011, this government was sitting with $191 billion of gross debt. You don't need to take my word for it. Just go to Wikipedia. It's not hard to find; it's the first search result that comes up. It has a table— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Bilyk ): Senator, you do know it is out of order to use props in the chamber? Senator O'NEILL: Well, you will have to use the screen on your own laptop or iPad to see the truth of what I'm telling you. Any Australian who cares to hear the truth, that this government wants to deny, that they are a failure as economic managers, just Google 'Australian government debt' and you will get the facts on Wikipedia. These are the facts. In 2010 there was $147 billion of gross debt. They worked pretty hard on that with their great mantra of 'jobs and growth' and by 2011 they grew the debt to $191 billion. By 2012, they grew Australia's national debt to $233 billion. Not happy with that, in 2013 they bumped it up a little further, to $257 billion. Well, by this time there was a pattern emerging. Under the Liberal-National parties, who claim to be great economic managers, who came in to fix the debt crisis, debt went up and up and up—and it continues. In 2013, even though they don't want to accept it, they must have seen there was a bit of a pattern here. I remember that they came in here and did a bit of a deal with the Greens to get rid of the debt ceiling, which was then sitting at $300 billion, because they knew they were going to fly past that. Indeed, that is exactly what they did. By 2014, this government, these so-called good economic managers, had Australia's gross debt at $319 billion. In 2015, it was $368 billion. In 2016, it was $420 billion. In 2017, it was $500 billion. In 2018—it keeps going up—it was $531 billion, and in 2019, according to this source, as of last week it was $541 billion. That is the truth about this government and their capacity to manage the economy. They have celebrated a surplus that doesn't exist. They sold congratulatory mugs on their website. They've lifted debt year after year for seven years in a row. This is economic mismanagement that has resulted in the stagnation of our economy and placed an incredible burden on families. And to do that with a sort of little double-deal, a little shuffle of the pea and thimble trick that they tried in April last year in the budget, when they declared that they were back in black—to even do that in that deceptive way, what they did was bank $4.6 billion from the NDIS. That was money that was there and should have gone out to people with disability. This government pulled that money out, yanked it out, and shoved it over onto what they declared as a surplus—a non-existent surplus—all the while racking up debt year after year. This government can find money and raise money for themselves in the bushfire crisis with a donation button, but they still cannot manage to raise the funds to get the budget back in black. This mob are no AC/DC. They're a show, and they've got the greatest showman on Earth at the front with all the sales lines and all the magic marketing phrases of Mr Morrison. The reality is that this is a government that is incapable of managing the economy of Australia. Australians are paying the price of a government that has no plan for jobs, no plan for wage growth and no plan to address climate change that Australians know, as of last summer, is reality. It's Mr Morrison and his government full of slogans, but they have no plan for our economy.