On February 1 1996, Mr Beazley was quoted as saying:
We're operating in surplus and our projections are for surpluses in the future.
On April 17 1996, after the Government released official figures on the state of the budget, Mr Beazley said:
.this notion of an $8 billion hole is largely a fraud, and .there are no statistics produced by Treasury that indicated that there was that dimension of a hole.
On May 10 1998, Mr Evans finally pleaded guilty to Labor's deficit. On Seven's Face to Face we witnessed the following exchange.
QUESTION: Yes, but you also left us with a $10 billion deficit as a result.
EVANS: Yeah, but it was a deficit that could and would have been corrected.