Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker Claydon, you have been in this place longer than I, so I think maybe you will agree to this point: often times in this place, in this chamber, there are a lot of theatrics. There is a lot of important work that happens here, absolutely, but there are also a lot of theatrics and, let's be honest here, this matter of public importance that is being raised by the Liberals is pure theatrics. Because if it was anything else, if it was something of substance, then they would be standing up here to talk about their policies, their agenda to help households in this cost-of-living challenge. But instead, they have nothing. They have no policies. Actually, no—sorry, colleagues—they do have one policy. Their one policy is nuclear energy, which is expensive, difficult to deliver and probably not going to come on until the never-never. They still haven't named where those power stations are going to be but—Hansard, can we just correct that—they do have one policy. They do have their nuclear policy, details to be determined—hopefully, tomorrow.

I appreciate the member for Menzies' comments about how important this is, and the tree analogy was really apt, because the budget to us is anything but theatrical. It is deeply serious and important, and we are genuinely trying to make a difference to people's lives. We're doing that on two fronts. These are things that we have been solely focused on over all the budgets that we have been delivering: to drive down inflation and to provide cost-of-living relief to households.

You can see that the work that the Treasurer and the entire cabinet are doing to put downward pressure on inflation is paying off. It is working. They have delivered two surpluses. The last time an Australian government was able to deliver two surpluses was almost two decades ago, roughly around the same time that Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone. That is how long ago it was. We were able to do it because we showed spending restraint. So, from those opposite, how many surpluses were they able to deliver? They delivered lots of bravado. They delivered lots of mugs. They did a lot of cigar smoking. But how many surpluses were they able to give us? Big fat doughnut—zero.

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