ELEANOR HALL: The Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has now responded to Senator Joyce's comments. He told chief political correspondent Lyndal Curtis that Australia can repay its debt.
LYNDAL CURTIS: Maybe a man noted for wearing Speedos doesn't see much point in doing the ironing. The Opposition leader Tony Abbott was dismissing the fallout, his co...[Audio skips]...
LINDSAY TANNER: Barnaby Joyce's comments again today show he is totally unfit for any kind of position of economic responsibility in this country. They are totally ridiculous and grossly irresponsible. The level of debt that Australia is projecting over the next five to 10 years is below where it was for much of the past 30 to 40 years of our history so his statements are ludicrous.
LYNDAL CURTIS: But people would be concerned about the debt, it was only a few years ago when the coalition paid it off and now it's back with a vengeance.
LINDSAY TANNER: Australia's debt levels are still going to be amongst the lowest in the developed world. We've got many countries like the United States and the United Kingdom and European countries with much higher levels of Government debt. It is grossly irresponsible of Senator Joyce to make these kinds of statements.
LYNDAL CURTIS: What's it going to take though to pay the debt back?
LINDSAY TANNER: The Government's projecting that the budget will return to surplus by 2015 and thereafter of course we will be paying down the debt and within about five or six years after that point it should be paid down to zero and we've got budget rules in place in order to enable us to do that. The Opposition is playing with fire here. Tony Abbott has said he's not interesting in economics. He's appointed a National Party maverick as his key economic spokesman who’s putting his Shadow Treasurer into the shade. There are literally hundreds of thousands of loyal Liberal Party supporters out there who support the Liberal Party year in and year out because they think they're sound economic managers. They are being taken for granted by Tony Abbott. He really needs to have a big think about this whole approach.
LYNDAL CURTIS: You say you've got rules in place but can you give an absolutely rock solid guarantee that a Labor Government will stick to those rules especially as electoral pressure comes on it, maybe not this election but the next one when it's trying to win?
LINDSAY TANNER: Well obviously I can't guarantee who'll be in Government at 2015. We've got one or two elections schedule between now and then and we take none of these things for granted of course and I'm not in the business of handing out guarantees but we can be judged by our performance Lyndal. We had a mid-year economic and fiscal outlook statement put out late last year and in that we had some new spending but as our rules require that spending was more than covered by savings initiatives.
LYNDAL CURTIS: There's a report in today's Financial Review that the budget is actually in a much better position than it was in even at the time of the economic update in December. Is that true and if it is why doesn't the Government release the figures showing that that's the case?
LINDSAY TANNER: Well we've obviously released the figures under my name as we are required to do, but you need to be very careful in interpreting these figures because of course they can be influenced by timing of particular payments, whether it's tax receipts or whether it's Government payments, so I would urge people to be very cautious and not to leap to the conclusions that some in the media have leapt to here. The signs are that we may possibly have a better outcome than was projected but there's no mean - but that's by no means certain and so these kind of extrapolations that we've got in the media today don't necessarily hold water. You have to be very careful about interpreting these monthly figures.
LINDSAY TANNER: Your colleagues Wayne Swan and Greg Combet have been reluctant to comment today on the appointment of Mike Kaiser to a senior job in the National Broadband Network. Are you happy with the way the process was conducted for that job?
LINDSAY TANNER: The NBN Co and Mike Quigley obviously conducted that process at arm's length in Government as they did other senior appointments...
LYNDAL CURTIS: But should ministers be recommending people for appointment for jobs?
LINDSAY TANNER: Look, I don't think there's a problem with ministers indicating views about particular candidates or possibilities but ultimately it's a question of the decision making process here and that of course was undertaken by the NBN Co and the board at arm's length from the Government. I'm perfectly comfortable with all of that. I don't see that there's been any problem with how this matter's been dealt with by the company.
LYNDAL CURTIS: Labor's side of politics has praised the former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull for the speech he gave to Parliament yesterday on the emissions trading scheme and climate change. The Prime Minister said he'd like to communicate better. Would you think of hiring Malcolm Turnbull as the Prime Minister's speech writer?
LINDSAY TANNER: Well given that Malcolm has an unfortunate track record as leader of the Opposition on a number of fronts I think there'd be a few who might question the merit of that but there's no doubt that he made a very important speech to the Parliament and he's really nailed the new Liberal Party here. He has pointed out that what Tony Abbott's on about is fiscally irresponsible, it's wasteful, it's inefficient.
LYNDAL CURTIS: That's the Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner speaking to Lyndal Curtis in Canberra.
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