Peter Dutton is then asked this question:

Q: Mr Dutton, in January Jacinta Price…

Dutton: The amazing Jacinta Price, she does a great job! But please keep going.

Q: She told the Australian the public service reductions will take the form of hiring freeze. She then later clarified to the masthead she would actually reduce redundancies and sensible reductions I think she called them. When did this switch back to a hiring freeze?

Dutton does not repeat that he thinks senator Price is “amazing”. He also doesn’t address the question and instead seeks to link himself with the Howard-Costello government from 18 years ago.

Dutton:

We made our announcement to say we got the policy wrong and we made it clear now, our position. Labor will continue to lie about and run scare campaigns, but I think every Australian should hear that at the next election, there’s a choice about who is best able to manage the economy, who can most efficiently spend taxpayers’ money.

One of the things that strikes me as strange – is the Labor Party is telling you if they find waste in the expense of taxpayers’ money, they’re going to continue with that wasteful spending?

Is that what the Government is saying? Because I would think at the moment families who have seen 12 interest rate increases under Mr Albanese, who have seen their household budgets go back in seven consecutive quarters where effectively they have gone back, families are $50,000 worse off, people are not insuring their homes or cars an at the moment just to save money, people are pulling their kids out of low-fee paying schools to just make sure their budgets can be balanced.

They have tripped every dollar out of their dollar, discretionary are spending is down, and they are hearing Mr Albanese say that out of all the taxes that those people are paying, that the Federal Government’s not prepared to spend it efficiently.

I find that quite remarkable.

What it says to me is that they don’t know how to manage the economy and when I was assistance Treasurer to Peter Costello in the Howard years, we did have to make tough decisions and we did have to make sure that we had money for a rainy day.

Now, if there was a global recession, if the United States goes into recession, if there is a broader war in Europe, if there is a – an attack by Iran in the Middle East, if we see uncertainty in trading routes in the South China Sea, Australia is going to have an impact from all of that and Australians need to know they got a Government in Canberra that can deal with uncertain times, economically and in a national security sense as well, and that’s what a Coalition Government would do.

The Howard years were helped by a once-in-a-generation mining boom. And it was before the GFC which broke the world economy (something we are still seeing the ramifications from). The Coalition didn’t have a surplus while it was in government and its hunt for a surplus almost pushed the Australian economy into recession (do you remember the ‘per capita’ recession under the Morrison government, which is when things were supposedly strong?) Now that is not to say that surpluses are good, but if that is the measure by which you judge good government, as Dutton is here, then his government failed it.