Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Finance, Minister for Women, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (14:53): I thank Senator Babet for the question, his first question in this place. The senator is right to point out that we face a significant challenge managing the almost $1 trillion—it will hit $1 trillion next financial year—of Liberal debt that has been left for this government to manage. Senator Hughes: That's not true! Senator GALLAGHER: It is true. There's $1 trillion of Liberal debt— Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Ayres! Senator GALLAGHER: that is left in the budget to manage. There's debt going out into the future. Whilst those opposite would like to say that this is all a result of the pandemic, the former government had doubled the debt before the pandemic hit. Let's not forget that. Their fiscal vandals had done the damage before the pandemic hit, and now we are all going to be paying the price for it—and the cost of servicing that debt is increasing and increasing rapidly. We've seen the latest figures from the Treasurer that some of that cost of servicing debt is going to exceed programs that currently pay for the childcare subsidy, higher education—those types of programs run by the Commonwealth government. The cost of servicing debt is going to exceed those. That's the situation we're in and that's why the work we're doing, Senator Babet, going through the budget line by line, is to see where sensible savings can be made so that we can reduce that debt over time. It is one of the key challenges facing us as we work through the Expenditure Review Committee to make sure that we can deal with some of those challenges over time, and servicing debt and managing the debt is a really important part of strong, responsible budget management. The PRESIDENT: Senator Babet, a first supplementary?