Senator JOYCE (Queensland—Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (18:28): We are getting towards the middle of the year, towards Christmas in July. There are only three things I wish for Christmas in July. Wish No. 1 is for the Labor Party to keep Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister. They must keep Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister. Wish No. 2 is that the carbon tax must remain the Labor Party's central plank, their central policy. Wish No. 3 is that they must continue to tell people that having $300 billion hocked up on the nation's credit card is not a problem. If I can have all three wishes, I will be a happy person but will not be in opposition for much longer. The only thing I could think of that would be better than that is if they were to make Craig Thomson Australian of the Year, but I do not think that is going to happen. This is really a statement about the complete financial ineptitude of this government and showing the Australian people just how ludicrous it has become. I woke up this morning and heard that France has elected a socialist Prime Minister who is going to remove himself from the austerity measures that had been negotiated, and therefore the whole austerity plan in Europe is looking like it is going to fall over. I found out that Greece is one step worse—they do not even appear to really have a government at this current time. And the Germans do not seem too keen to keep on bailing people out. Then I read in our own budget papers that we are talking about an 11 per cent increase in our revenue streams. This is marvellous! It is a heroic outcome! Then we see that, as always, they are trying to sneak through the debt. It is easy for people to understand that, if you owe money, you must pay it back. There are no tricks to this. I tried. I thought: 'Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt. Today I will ask the finance minister of the Commonwealth of Australia a very simple question that any person who has any basic understanding of commerce and finance would understand, which is: what is your peak debt position?' Any person working in a bank will tell you that that is a fundamental question for any credit paper: what is the peak debt position? The minister's answer is there for posterity. You can watch it any time you want. It is the most agonising three minutes of film you will ever see—Penny Wong trying to answer the most basic fundamental question. A loan officer in a bank would be able to answer, but the finance minister of the Commonwealth of Australia could not. Why are we giving ourselves a $300 billion overdraft? Why are we getting a $300 billion credit limit? These people who cannot answer the most basic question always run to something else. They said: 'It is not the gross debt, you see. It is the net debt.' It is so easy to fix it—change three simple letters and everything is better. I am curious. I am a very curious person, so I thought I would have a look. I thought: 'Here is our gross debt position. It is $274.231 billion.' You can buy a few Smarties for that. Our net debt was $143.345 billion. That is where they have latched on to it. I thought, 'We have to drill down through this to find out where this figure comes from.' I followed their accountancy statements and went up to the notes where they give the calculation that net debt equals the sum of deposits held, government securities, loans and other borrowings minus the sum of cash deposits, advances paid, investments, loans and placements. I thought 'loans and placements' was interesting and I wondered how much we had there. There was over $100 billion in loans and placements. I thought I had better start digging through that and see what was going on there. I thought, 'Let's find out what is happening in loans and placements.' So I went and found it in their notes—$107 billion. It is made up of $30.6 billion of investments and deposits. Okay, I will grant you that. You can have that. Book it. There is an IMF quota of $8.8 billion. Well, I do not know about that. I thought I would have a close look at that. Then we have the other one—$68.3 billion of 'other'. It is like sundries. They have said: 'These are other things we do not quite know about, so we will just bang them under "other". If we bang them under "other" no-one will ask. No-one will ever inquire.' What is this 'other'? If this 'other' has $68.3 billion in it, you should grab some of that 'other' and put it in your account. Then you will not have to extend your overdraft limit. Problem solved. If this 'other' is there and the net debt is correct then grab some of the 'other' and put it in your account and therefore you will not have to increase the overdraft to $300 billion. But I think you will find you actually cannot grab that 'other' because it stands for 'other people's money'—predominantly public servant superannuants—and they do not like the idea of you using their money to pay off your debt. This is the most dangerous thing. A Prime Minister can be fixed. We can forget about Craig Thomson. We can close our eyes and Peter Slipper disappears. When we get to government we will get rid of the carbon tax. But the debt— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Crossin ): Senator Joyce, I understand you are referring to members of the other chamber, so I am just going to remind you that one of those people does happen to be the Speaker of the House. I would just remind you about using their correct titles. Senator JOYCE: I accept your admonishment, Madam Acting Deputy President. You are dead right: Mr Slipper is the Speaker of the House. How could we forget that? Who put him there, pray tell? There is a question for the kiddies: who made Peter Slipper the Speaker? Let's think about it. It would have been Julia Gillard. Senator Feeney: That is the Prime Minister. Senator JOYCE: Yes, the Prime Minister— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Joyce, I am reminding you that no matter who you refer to in the House of Representatives they have a title to be used. Senator JOYCE: Mr Peter Slipper is definitely the Speaker of the House. I agree. Mr Peter Slipper, the member for Fisher, is definitely the Speaker of the House and he was most definitely nominated and put there by the Australian Labor Party, whose Prime Minister is Ms Julia Gillard. What a marvellous decision that was by her! If you are going to believe any person in accountancy or finance the only thing you can judge them by is their track record and their capacity for accuracy—how much of what they say becomes fact. Two years ago the government said that this year we would have a deficit and that we would be out the back door by $13 billion. That was a very bad outcome, so we were worried about that. But they told us about the sunny out plans of fiscal rectitude. They told us better days were ahead. They told us that after they put in place the carbon tax and had taken Jerusalem things would get better. But the next year things got worse. The next year they said that this year it would get much worse, that we would be out the back door by $22 billion. So they basically got close to doubling the figure in their previous statement. They were almost 100 per cent wrong. But we have had some consistency because the next year—this year—we find they are out the back door by $44.4 billion. So there is a consistency here. They are generally 100 per cent wrong one year out. So whatever they have said about the surplus next year, if they follow the trend—and the Treasurer talks about things following trends; he is a very trendy guy—they will be 100 per cent wrong next year as well. I will take bets with any person who wants to tell me that they will have a $1.5 billion surplus even after they have cooked the books, because they are so totally incompetent that the only thing you can rely on is them being wrong. If this was a credit paper, it would get kicked out the door. You would get absolutely assassinated by the credit bureau. If you worked for them, they would say to you, 'You will lose your job if you keep presenting rubbish like this.' I remember an old boss of mine, Mr Muntz. He would have written all over it what an absurd proposition has been brought up. Now we have these other mad things. We have all these things wandering off in the capital account, wandering off the balance sheet. The NBN is the classic one. Pray tell: do you honestly believe it is worth what you are borrowing for it? If it is not, shouldn't you be booking a provision for the loss? Do you think you can flog this white elephant off for the $50 billion we are going to borrow to build it? There is not a chance. If it is such a good deal, why aren't you just issuing NBN bonds? NBN would stand for 'next budget nightmare'. NBN bonds are what you should be issuing. If it is such a great proposition the market would love them and go and buy them. But it is not. No-one who is sane would buy an NBN bond, so it is coming through Australian government securities. The reason they would not buy one is that it would not be worth it. Our debt is going through the roof and, as Bill Mortley, my first boss in accounting, told me about this, if you did not laugh you would cry because it is so totally and utterly out of control. But we have to pay it back— (Time expired)