Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service and Integrity) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for his question. He has asked me questions about the departure tax and about the management of investment funds. I will seek advice from my department and get back to the shadow minister with answers. He has asked me about the staffing of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Again, I will come back to him specifically on those measures. He has asked me about minutes of the last RBA meeting and the references made to budget surpluses and the necessary interaction between budget surpluses and interest rate levels. It is undeniably the case that prudent budget management, as we see from the Commonwealth government, will deliver a budget surplus not in the current financial year, for which this budget is constructed, but in out years as well. There is no doubt that, in taking pressure off financial markets by delivering a budget surplus, the government is more than doing its part in helping deliver an environment conducive to low interest rates, conducive to supporting families who are under their own domestic budget pressures, but also, importantly, continuing to deliver a budget and a fiscal environment envied by the world, supported by good public policy.

I say this about the conversations around the departure tax and the managed investment funds measures. The Commonwealth put in place a budget which had been carefully thought through, supported by expert advice and consideration from the Department of Finance and Deregulation. One of the fundamental things that an opposition can do at a time of global financial market uncertainty is to support the Commonwealth budget and to support the government in its measures, both on the revenue side and on the expenditure side. But we are realists; we operate in the real world. I will come back to the shadow minister with specific answers to the questions he has asked which I have not answered specifically here now.

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