The Finance Minister is either deliberately lying to Australians or is unable to read his Government’s own Budget papers properly after claiming the country’s fiscal position has continually improved under the Coalition.

Ahead of next week’s mid-year update, Mathias Cormann claims:

“What we’ve done at every Budget and Budget update is to ensure that we don’t go backwards, in fact that we improve the position based on the effect of policy decisions.”

Sunday Agenda, Sky News, 11 December 2016

That’s just plain wrong and directly at odds with what the Budget figures actually show.

In fact, cumulative policy decisions over the forward estimates in the 2015 Budget and beyond have actually delivered a $10.9 billion fiscal deterioration.

On the Coalition’s watch, net debt has blown out by more than $100 billion and continues to rise.

The projected deficit for this financial year has tripled, while the deficit for 2015-16 was a whopping eight times higher than projected the day the Coalition took office.

The Turnbull Government’s economic mismanagement is putting our hard-won AAA credit rating at risk.

Malcolm Turnbull and his economic team will have no one to blame but themselves if they lose the AAA, which will push up mortgage repayments and smash business and consumer confidence.

If this chaotic and clueless Government was serious about Budget repair and protecting our AAA rating, it would immediately ditch its $50 billion tax gift for big multinationals and the banks.

Labor has led the way when it comes to fair Budget repair and we urge the Government to adopt our sensible proposals like changes to negative gearing and capital gains.