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

a multiple of the real spending growth that we have seen in our budgets so far. We have been cleaning up the mess that they left us in the budget at the same time as we've been providing cost-of-living relief for people. So I hope that the member for Hume asks many more questions today. Whenever they ask these questions, it gives us an opportunity to point to the shameful mess that they left behind in the budget and the diligent, considered and methodical way that we have been cleaning that mess up, not instead of helping people or investing in the future but as well as doing those things.

I want to say about those two surpluses in the budget that, if it was easy, even the member for Hume could do it, but they were unable to do it in their nine years in office. When the member for Hume was the most embarrassing part of a bad government, they were unable to get anywhere near the kinds of outcomes that we are seeing in the budget as a consequence of our diligence and the responsible way that we have come at this difficult task.

Honourable members interjecting—

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