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

What really cracks me up, about the question from the shadow Treasurer, is that the New South Wales Liberal government has just legislated a very similar scheme, for the very same reason, that this government seeks to implement a similar policy. That's the first fact that either the shadow Treasurer doesn't understand or he's not being honest about. The second one is that interest rates started going up on their watch. They started going up in May 2022. It was very clear then, just as it's clear now, that the interest rates that people are battling to pay started going up on their watch.

So if you put it all together, when it comes to the cost of living, before the government changed hands, interest rates were rising, real wages were going backwards and inflation was going up, and a big part of the reason for that was the electricity price chaos and the energy market chaos—that the shadow Treasurer should come to the dispatch box and take responsibility for.

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