Mr HOCKEY (North Sydney—The Treasurer) (15:30): The first thing I say in response to the shadow Treasurer is that we do not take all credit for winning the last election. I think the Labor Party helped us along the way. I want to personally thank the honourable member for McMahon for his contribution to us winning the last election. It was very generous of him and of all his colleagues. That help was primarily based on the fact that, after six years in government, the Labor Party just did not know what it believed in. The Leader of the Opposition is a great example of that. He does not know what he believes in. He is a man with loyalty to no-one but himself. He is a man who has been loyal to no-one in his life. He was not loyal to Kevin Rudd and then he was not loyal to Julia Gillard. Then, in the end, he was not even loyal to the Labor Party but he became the leader of the Labor Party—and he is not even loyal to the policies that they took to the last election. They come in here and give us sanctimonious lectures about improving the budget when the Labor Party itself is opposing $5 billion of policies it took to the last election to pay for its own promises—spare us the hypocrisy! They come in here and lecture us about superannuation and yet the Labor Party increased taxes on superannuation by $9 billion in the last six years. There were $9 billion of increases in superannuation taxes. They could not do that with a mining tax they designed, yet they managed to find $9 billion of new taxes on superannuation after Kevin Rudd promised the Australian people in 2007, in writing, that they would not change superannuation 'not one jot, not one tittle'. That is what Labor said in 2007 and that is what they promised the Australian people, and then they broke that promise. We went to the 2010 election and the 2013 election saying that we were going to get rid of the mining tax and the associated expenditure. Labor does not want to hear this. They do not want to hear this because they are embarrassed by their own policy failures. They are embarrassed by their own political failures as well, because they can hardly complain about us when they will not let us keep every single initiative that we took to the last election. When we come to a deal with reasonable senators in the Senate to get our election commitments through, they complain that we are breaking election commitments. The hide of them! The Labor Party does not know what is right and what is wrong, because they do not believe in anything. Bill Shorten has no core values. He is a man who blows in the wind. He is an insipidly weak man. Mr Mitchell: Speaker, I rise on a point of order. You have been very consistent today in pulling up the Leader of the Opposition for not addressing people properly. Three times you gave that ruling earlier this year when the words used by the Prime Minister were not someone's correct title. Now, again, the Treasurer is using the incorrect title for members. He should be brought into line like the rest of us. The SPEAKER: I will do precisely that. Thank you, member for McEwen. The correct title for me is Madam Speaker. I would ask the Treasurer to also use the correct titles. Mr HOCKEY: The Leader of the Opposition is an insipidly weak man. He has no principles. He blows in the wind, as his loyalty blows between many people. That is reflected in the fact that he is moaning about us keeping our election commitments and each day he comes in to complain that we may be breaking election commitments. This is a Leader of the Opposition who has successfully dealt Labor out of any activity in relation to policymaking during this term of government. They thought they could paint us into a corner in relation to the debt limit. We did a deal with the Greens to remove the debt limit that Labor created but Labor could never keep. They thought they painted us into a corner on the repeal of the carbon tax and then we managed to do a deal with a number of senators to pass the repeal of the carbon tax. They thought they painted us into a corner in relation to FOFA and then we did a deal to get that through. Then they thought they painted us into a corner on the mining tax, and we managed to do a deal with reasonable senators as well. I said last week that the Labor Party is travelling at high speed down into a cul-de-sac. I am proven absolutely right today. They are driving at high speed down into a cul-de-sac—a policy cul-de-sac but also a political cul-de-sac. Why so? That is because their only friends in this parliament are the Greens. Ms Ryan interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Lalor is not in her seat and is not entitled to speak. Mr HOCKEY: They are the only friends of the Labor Party in this parliament, as was the case in the last parliament and the parliament before. Their only friends are the Greens. They are soul mates and political mates with the Greens. They have not learned anything from the last election. They have learnt absolutely nothing. Ms Ryan interjecting— The SPEAKER: If the member for Lalor interjects one more time, she will leave. Mr HOCKEY: As a result, we are getting on with our agenda. If nothing had been done about the budget, we would have been facing $123 billion of deficits over the four years. We would be facing $667 billion of debt over a 10-year period. That is $25,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in Australia. I will tell you what is unfair: Labor's legacy of $25,000 of debt for every man, woman and child is unfair. I will tell you what is unfair: $1 billion a month in interest, just on the debt that Labor left behind. Seventy per cent of it goes overseas to repay the money to people that we borrowed from. I will tell you what is unfair—that that we leave Australians with a lesser quality of life in the future than that which we have had. When you borrow money today, you are borrowing from the future. The money must be repaid, in principal and interest, into the future. What have we done? We have started by identifying the mess that was left behind. They left behind record deficits and record debt. They left behind 93 announced but unlegislated taxation changes and we are fixing that. They left behind unfulfilled agreements on trade with Korea and Japan, and there was China as well. We have delivered two of the three, with one yet to come—a great credit to the minister for trade. We said we would end the age of entitlement, starting with corporate Australia, and we have done that. We know it is not painless. We know that. But we have delivered, and it took enormous courage. We stood up to people because it is the right thing to do. Whether it is an industry or whether it is a business, we cannot take money from the battlers of Australia paying tax and give it to corporate Australia. We cannot do that. We said we would clean up the mess in taxation that Labor left. We got rid of the carbon tax for pensioners and middle Australia—$550 per household per year. It is a burden lifted off manufacturing, and a burden lifted off exports. We said we would get rid of it, and we got rid of it. We said we would get rid of the mining tax and associated expenditure. Every day during the last election Labor kept saying, 'show us your costings.' We did show them the costings, and we provided in detail every single bit of the abolition of the mining tax package. We gave every single detail in full, and Labor did not like it. We had the guts to go to the election and give the people the facts, and the electorate voted for us, just as they voted for us to get on with the job of fixing the economy. There were $800 billion of approvals for projects held up under Labor, and we have gone on and done the job with those. We are also getting rid of red tape—$800 million a year in red-tape burden on business. We have got rid of that as well. We are getting on with the job of strengthening the Australian economy. We are building the infrastructure of the 21st century. We are laying down plans and delivering on $125 billion of new infrastructure for Australia. We are creating tens of thousands of new jobs, because ultimately it comes down to jobs. Under the former minister for workplace relations, Job Creation Australia was tracking at 5,000 new jobs a month. Under us that figure is 15,000 new jobs a month. Under us, even Labor economists like Stephen Koukoulas recognise that business expectations are at decade highs, that business confidence is at highs and that consumer confidence is back to highs. The bottom line is that we are building a stronger economy. We are building a stronger budget. We are determined to build a stronger Australia. I say to the Labor Party: you are irrelevant; you have put yourselves in that place—don't blame anyone other than yourselves for your own political and policy incompetence. Mr Burke: Speaker, I rise on a point of order under standing order 67, relating to the question we are about to vote on. The copy of the amendment that has been circulated has a point (2), which refers to delivering a simpler, fairer tax system. That point (2) has been crossed out on the amendment copy that we have been given. When we vote on the amendment, I want to know whether or not the Prime Minister has actually moved point (2), or whether they are not claiming that the government has delivered a simpler, fairer tax system in their amendment. If it is of assistance, my recollection is that the Prime Minister did not refer to a point (2) when he moved the amendment. He went from point (1) to point (3), but given that we have a copy with a point (2) crossed out, I wondered under standing order 67 whether you could affirm what the detail of the amendment is that we are voting on. Who crossed it out would be another question. The SPEAKER: I think that the best evidence on what we are voting on is the amendment which has been circulated—as it stands, with (2) crossed out. All that means is that it was not debated, and it was not dealt with. The question is that the amendment be agreed to. The SPEAKER: The question now is that the motion, as amended, be agreed to. Question agreed to.