Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

as every member of this House knows, except perhaps the shadow Treasurer. If the shadow Treasurer had any credibility whatsoever, he would acknowledge, first of all, that rates started going up on the former government's watch. Secondly, he would say what members over there said when they started going up during the election, which was interest rates were not going to be at 0.1 per cent forever. So what we've done—and one of the reasons we're proud of the budget we handed down two weeks ago and the shadow Treasurer won't ask me any questions about the budget that was handed down two weeks ago—is we've made sure that we weren't making the inflation problem worse. In fact, we showed remarkable spending restraint, real spending growth was flat, we banked the upward revenue revisions and we invested in the supply chain issues which were pushing inflation up in our economy.

I was asked about interest rates.

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