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

Without a hint of self-awareness, the shadow Treasurer talks about something that sank without a trace. The least relevant person in the parliament wants to get up and talk about relevance. He asked me about inflation and he asked me about the budget. The budget was designed to put downward pressure on inflation, and our responsible economic management is one of the reasons why inflation is almost half what we inherited from those opposite, when the shadow Treasurer was the most embarrassing part of an embarrassing government.

Inflation is lower now than when we came to office. We've turned two big Liberal deficits into two Labor surpluses. We've improved the bottom line by $215 billion. Debt this year is $150 billion lower than what we inherited. Next year it'll be $185 billion lower than what we inherited. That means we'll avoid $80 billion in interest costs on the debt that they racked up. Because of all of that—because of that responsible economic management—we are making welcome and encouraging progress on the big economic challenges that we inherited when we came to office two years ago.

I am the first to acknowledge that we would like inflation to moderate further and faster. We've made that clear on a number of occasions. That's why the budget has cost-of-living help which is designed in a way to be part of the solution to our inflation challenge, not part of the problem. It's why we're managing the budget in a responsible way, cleaning up the mess we inherited from those opposite. At the same time we recognise we've also got a growth challenge in our economy as well. We're fighting inflation without smashing the economy. We've seen some progress since we came to office. If those opposite were still in government, inflation would be higher, debt and deficit would be bigger and the economy would be even weaker.

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