GUY CREIGHTON
The new LNP Government will ‘regretfully’ have to increase the current Federal debt of $300 billion to allow it to fulfil some of its pre-election promises.
Scott Buchholz, the re-elected LNP MP for the country seat of Wright, disclosed this while commenting on his win.
He said the LNP’s success in gaining a big majority in Government provided it with a mandate to implement headline policies.
These included immediate plans to repeal the carbon tax, stop asylum seekers coming by boats, and reduce red tape.
“This victory doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the community,” he said.
“There were many businesses within the electorate that were saying if there wasn’t a change in Government, they would have to pack up for three years.
“So with that goes an enormous amount of pressure on us to live within our means as a Government as we said we’d do.
“We want to try and bring some order to our expenditure – Treasury have already indicated in their PEFO budgetary figures that by Christmas they are forecasting our debt ceiling will be in excess of $340 billion.
“Given that our credit card limit is at $300 billion, regretfully one of the first things we’re going to have to do, to try and turn this big ship around, is increase the debt ceiling to cater for agreements that we said we would honour.
“Just to put it into perspective, if you go back to Howard’s largest surplus that he ever delivered we would have to emulate that [for]18 consecutive years to pay down this debt.
“In this climate, the chances of that are remote.”