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

He's got a lot of nerve asking about responsible economic management, after the mess that they left us to clean up in the budget. We won't be lectured about debt, spending or responsible economic management by the party that left us with more than a trillion dollars in Liberal Party debt, which we have spent our two years in office trying to clean up. They would not know the first thing about responsible economic management. The least familiar word in the budget last night, to those opposite, was the word 'surplus'. They had nine cracks at it. They promised a surplus in their first year and every year thereafter, and they came up with doughnuts—none from nine. We've been here for two years, and we're delivering two surpluses at the same time as we provide cost-of-living relief for people and invest in the future of our economy. If they had their way, inflation would be higher, debt and deficits would be bigger, wages growth would be lower and tax cuts for middle Australia would be smaller.

The reason I'm so grateful that the Prime Minister has given me the opportunity to answer the question from the member for Hume is it allows me to point out to those opposite that what matters here is real spending growth in the economy, and real spending growth under this side of the House has been 1.4 per cent. Do you know what it was under those opposite? It was 4.1 per cent. There's hypocrisy in asking us about spending in the budget, when what they spent, in real spending growth, was—

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