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

Some questions even the shadow Treasurer won't ask, and he's thrown this one up the back for very good reason! If they want to ask us about productivity, perhaps they could mention that their decade in office was the weakest for productivity growth in the 60 years that productivity growth data has been kept. If they want to ask about disposable incomes perhaps they could mention in passing at least that when we came to office real wages were falling by 3.4 per cent and now they're growing again. Now real wages are growing again. Perhaps somebody could explain to the honourable member up the back, with his unfortunate timing in his question about the tax take, that the tax take went down again in the national accounts this quarter and it went down in the quarter before as well.

They may have traded up when it came to the questioner, but the question is still incredibly, incredibly poor, and what it betrays is a total lack of understanding of the economy. You've got the shadow Treasurer wandering around saying there's $315 billion dollars too much spending in the budget, when that number includes indexation of the age pension, indexation of veterans' pension and it also includes our efforts to strengthen Medicare after a decade of attacking Medicare.

If they want to ask these questions about the economy, at least be upfront about the shameful record that you left behind when the member for Hume was the most embarrassing part of the most embarrassing government since Federation, and they delivered us inflation which is higher than now—

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