Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Minister for Finance) (14:49): The government has been very transparent in the savings that we intend to make out of the foreign aid budget. Given the debt and deficit disaster that we have inherited from the Labor Party, we have no choice but to focus on getting our own affairs in order before we start spending money that we have not got. The Labor Party and the Greens might want us to continue to borrow money to give it away, but we think we have a responsibility to our children and grandchildren to repair the budget, to build a stronger, more prosperous economy, to create opportunity for everyone to get ahead, but we are not going to continue to spend money that we have not got. The spending growth trajectory in foreign aid that former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd locked Australia into in his quest to become the next Secretary-General of the United Nations was completely unsustainable and it was completely unaffordable. Our children and grandchildren would not have to pay the price— The PRESIDENT: Pause the clock. Senator Rhiannon on a point of order. Senator Rhiannon: Mr President, I rise on a point of order on relevance. The question was quite simple and direct and was about slowing down expenditure on overseas aid programs. Could you draw the minister back to the question please? The PRESIDENT: The minister has just over one minute left to answer the question. I draw the minister's attention to the question. Senator CORMANN: As I was saying, the Australian people should not have to pay the price for Mr Rudd going out and trying to stack the numbers in his quest to become the next Secretary-General of the United Nations. In this budget we have frozen the foreign aid allocation, the foreign aid budget, this year and next year at the same nominal amount. Then we are increasing it by the CPI instead of taking it up to 0.5 per cent of gross national income—as we transparently said we would do before the election and as we transparently said we would do in the budget. That is the responsible course of action given the debt and deficit disaster that we inherited from the Labor-Green government when we came into government in September. But of course, if the Greens support our agenda for stronger growth, if the Greens support our agenda to repair the budget, if the Greens support our agenda to get back into surplus, we will have more money available in order to invest in causes like foreign aid. But in the meantime, while we have to borrow a billion dollars a month just to pay the interest on Labor's debt, we just cannot afford more than what is in the budget.