The Hon. John Ruddick

speaker

1,157 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 19 Apr

The Hon. John Ruddick’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.

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2 Worlds Collide Podcast · #96 - The Hon. John Ruddick - Government Trust, Immigration & Who Takes Power Next · 19 Apr 2026 podcast

So remember, the debt's $20 billion at the end of Howard.

And then at the end of Rudd and Gillard, six years later, it was about $250 billion.

Now, that's not good, but it's still, we were very low compared to the rest of the Western world in terms of the government debt.

Now, it would have been better if we hadn't have blown that money, but still wasn't that bad.

And Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey were the opposition leaders, the opposition treasury, and they were saying, oh, vote for us.

The government debt's gone out of control.

The debt's gone out of control.

It's up to a quarter of a trillion dollars.

And I thought, well, okay, it'd be better if it wasn't there.

Look, it's not a crisis.

Don't freak people out.

We should be paying it off.

And if the Liberals get in, I thought they would pay it off.

Now then what happened, Sam, was they got rid of Tony Abbott, tried to pay off the debt, but he didn't try that hard, and he backed down when it got a bit tough going in the polls.

Before COVID, so we've had Turnbull, sorry, we've had Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison.

And before COVID, the stupid liberals who used to be good on running the economy, they've taken Rudd's debt for no good reason from $250 billion to about $580 billion.

There wasn't any wars.

There wasn't a recession.

There wasn't a pandemic.

It was just, oh, well, we don't have the courage to cut spending.

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