Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has channelled Arnold Schwarzenegger while trying to fend of budget attacks from Labor, calling the opposition leader an "economic girlie man".
He said Labor's problem was that "Bill Shorten is an economic girlie man" - a phrase coined by former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at a 2004 Republican convention speech directed at budget pessimists.
Labor says it could get the budget back to surplus ahead of the coalition, which is facing difficulty getting several controversial measures through the Senate.
Senator Cormann said Labor had no viable plan to achieve a surplus and challenged the opposition to reveal where it would make cuts and increase revenue.
Labor MP Ed Husic lashed out at Senator Cormann, saying he should stop the "juvenile name-calling" and fix the budget.
"The Terminator should become the Deodoriser and get the stink out of his budget," he told Sky News.
Female politicians hit back
Senator Penny Wong has responded to the Finance Minister's comments by tweeting a video that asks the question, "when did doing something 'like a girl' become an insult?"
And Greens Leader Christine Milne has labelled the Minister's comments as sexist:
Transcript of 'Girlie Man' comments
Minister Cormann's comments were as follows:
He’s dreaming. I mean the Labor Party has not delivered a surplus in Australia for 25 years. The problem that the Labor Party has today is that Bill Shorten is an economic girlie man. He doesn’t have what it takes to repair the Budget mess that they have left behind. He doesn’t even have what it takes to get Labor to support their own savings, savings that they themselves initiated and banked in their last Budget in government under Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. The truth is that the Labor caucus rolled Bill Shorten, forced Bill Shorten to oppose Labor’s own savings. So what hope do we have for Labor under Bill Shorten’s leadership ever to repair the Budget? Because if Bill Shorten is now telling us that he will bring the Budget back into surplus more quickly given that he is starting from way behind on the back of opposing our Budget savings measures to a large degree, well he really has to tell us what he is going to do? Where is he going to cut deeper? Where is he going to increase taxes in order to not only make up that ground, but to get into surplus more quickly. We can’t take what he says seriously in any way, shape or form.
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