Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank all the honourable members for their interest in this important portfolio area. I'm happy to be representing the Minister for Finance and Manager of Government Business in the Senate in this important consideration in detail of these matters. I commend her for the excellent work that she's doing as a part of the government's economic team and the extraordinary work that we've done in turning around a pretty parlous budgetary situation but also helping the government but, more importantly, Australians and small businesses to navigate their way through a cost-of-living crisis and very difficult economic circumstances. As they do that, they know that they've got a government in their corner.

There's targeted cost-of-living relief in the area of energy price relief, which honourable members across the other side of the chamber, the coalition parties, opposed. At the same time as allegedly championing the concerns of members and their electorates, they were voting against energy price relief, which beggars belief. There's the stuff we are doing in child care—the measures that will be coming into effect in a few weeks time—and the extraordinary leaps forward that we're making in restoring aged care from the mess that we inherited.

On medicines, we're on the side of people who want cheaper medicines and more affordable medicines and health care. The coalition are on the side of people who want Australians to pay more for their health care and medicines.

To the underlying fiscal circumstances: a year ago, the budget was forecast to be nearly $80 billion in deficit. Those were the circumstances that we inherited. Today, we stand here with a budget which forecasts a $4.2 billion surplus. There's been a lot of hard work that has gone into this and some difficult decisions that we've made that our predecessors refused to make.

In delivering an improved budget balance, we're making a down payment on what governments can do in the future, because every dollar that we take off our debt is a dollar less that we have to pay in interest payments, which is one of the fastest-growing areas of expenditure on the government's books. In taking action to rebuild our fiscal buffers, there are some key things in this budget that I bring to the attention of members. Eighty-seven per cent of the new revenue that we have received has been returned to budget repair—82 per cent in this budget, but 87 per cent over our first two budgets in our first 12 months in office. That's important, because it's saving us over $80 billion over the medium term on interest repayments. To put that in perspective for members in the House, that's about twice what we spend in our Defence portfolio every year. So that's a significant saving. It's building our capacity to reinvest that in paying further debt but also to invest in capacity in defence, in infrastructure, in education and in health, in child care and in aged care—all the priorities of the government.

We've identified $7.8 billion in spending saves and reprioritisations in this budget. That adds to what we already put away in the previous budget—close to $40 billion over the two budgets. Contrast that to the previous two budgets where the number was zero from the coalition. We're doing the hard work. I'd ask you to cast your mind back to about a month ago when the opposition leader gave his speech in reply. He criticised Labor for expending but added around $10 billion to coalition spending through a combination of new spending commitments and dangling things in front of the voters' eyes and then taking them away and dangling them again, saying, for example, that he would perhaps, maybe, continue but then saying, 'I didn't really mean that.' Those were new initiatives announced but uncosted, so roughly $10 billion in extra spending from those on the other side. Contrast that to what we have been able to deliver, significant savings and improving the budget bottom line.

There are a couple of other things. This budget is focused on ensuring that we can rebuild the capacity of the Public Service. There have been lots of examples lately of why that is needed, and I look forward to the opportunity of saying more about that in the near future.

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