Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance) (14:09): I thank Senator Di Natale for that follow-up question. The Treasurer's speech last week at the Sydney Institute was an outstanding speech, indeed. It explained the efforts of this government to repair the budget mess that we have inherited from the Labor-Greens administration. We inherited a budget situation where Labor, in their first five years of government, accumulated $191 billion in deficits. Senator Cash: How much? Senator CORMANN: They accumulated $191 billion in deficits. Their last budget left behind another $123 billion in projected deficits, and government debt was heading for $667 billion. We are forced to pay $1 billion a month in interest, just to service the debt that has been accumulated by the Labor Party. And remember, there was no government net debt in 2007; there was a $20 billion surplus. There was money in the bank. In the last year of the Howard government, the government was collecting more than $1 billion in net interest payments on the back of a positive net asset position.