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

I welcome the opportunity from the shadow Treasurer to talk about today's national accounts, because what today's national accounts show now beyond any doubt is that the economic strategy in the budget was exactly right for the combination of challenges that we confront together. If we had taken the advice of those opposite, talking about $315 billion dollars, too much spending and all the rest of the rubbish that they peddle, that would have been diabolical for an economy which was already weak and for people who were already under pressure.

When it comes to the per capita measures that the opposition member refers to, it is not unprecedented for the economy to go backwards in per capita terms. We know that because it happened on their watch as well. It's not uncommon around the world to see that measure go backwards. We've seen that in a number of countries over the last couple of years. So, if he wants to ask about living standards, he should recognise that, when we came to office, real wages, for example, were falling by 3.4 per cent, and now real wages are growing again because of the efforts of this government to give people the kind of cost-of-living relief and growing wages that they need and deserve when the economy is soft and when people are under pressure.

You get a lot of free advice when you're putting budgets together. Some of it turns out to be right; some of it turns out to be wrong. Almost everything that those opposite have said about the economy and the budget has turned out to be wrong, and that shouldn't surprise us, because they are the same characters that left behind massive deficits, a huge amount of debt, inflation almost double what it is now, real wages falling and real spending growth higher than it is now. That's why nobody takes the shadow treasurer especially seriously. If he wants to ask lots of questions about the national accounts and the budget, I'd say that would be a very good thing.

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