Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow Treasurer for his question. I regret that the Treasurer is once again left out of the process. The fact is that the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply exposed the coalition's catastrophising about inflation and interest rates for what it was: another concocted scare campaign. Not only has the opposition backed most of the budget measures; they failed to come up with a single save. Of course, they didn't have costings for the policies that they announced.

I'll tell you how you take pressure off inflation: you take pressure off inflation by turning what was a coalition predicted $78 billion deficit into a projected $4.2 billion surplus. That's how you take pressure off inflation, by making difficult decisions, by banking most of the revenue gains which had been there, and by making sure that you hand down a responsible budget. That's what we did. When we announced alternative policies, such as our childcare plan, we actually got them costed beforehand. We didn't have a circumstance whereby, for the one thing that was announced by the opposition leader, there were no costings whatsoever. There were, of course, no savings whatsoever, a bit like their 2022 budget. No savings whatsoever.

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