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

A big thanks to the member for Werriwa for her hard work on behalf of her constituents—particularly the 80,000 of them who will be receiving a tax cut this week from this Prime Minister and this government. In the last week alone, we have rolled out cost-of-living help for every taxpayer and every household, we have introduced the Future Made in Australia legislation—earlier today—and we got confirmation on Friday that we are on track for a second surplus, the first time there have been back-to-back surpluses in our budgets for almost two decades.

These are the fruits of responsible economic policy made in a considered and a methodical and a consultative way. It's all about understanding the challenges and chances in our economy and managing them and modernising our economy and maximising our advantages so that our people benefit. And that's because we understand that you ease cost-of-living pressures with tax cuts and energy bill relief, not with expensive nuclear reactors which will push up energy prices. We understand that the best way to invest in the future is with clarity and ambition, not with the kind of extreme ideology that creates investor uncertainty, which is what we hear from those opposite.

Now, the shambolic announcement that we heard yesterday makes the contrast between this side of the House and that side of the House even clearer. Their announcement on divestiture has exactly the same shambolic features as the nuclear announcement, the tax announcement and the migration announcement. Every announcement that they make is a new bin fire of angry incompetence which puts the future of our economy at risk. Every new announcement that they make is the worst combination of uncosted and unhinged and undercooked. The primary purpose of each new announcement seems to be to distract from the announcement that they made a few weeks ago.

Let me give you a sense of that, Mr Speaker. Even a cursory look at the headlines gives you a sense of the shambles of those opposite: shadow Treasurer 'rules out subsidies for nuclear power' before they announced 100 per cent subsidies; shadow Treasurer 'further confuses coalition's migration message'; 'Shadow treasurer changes script on Dutton's immigration cuts'; shadow Treasurer 'at odds' with leader 'on migration targets in "shambolic" post-budget appearance'; Leader of the Opposition 'vetoes Nats-Greens supermarket break-up plan' just before he announced it; 'Liberals split on big retailers break-up'; Leader of the Opposition's 'supermarket push leaves some colleagues feeling "ambushed"'; 'Peter Dutton says tax cut plan "too costly"'—that's the tax cut plan that the shadow Treasurer has announced. But my favourite of all of them is this headline: '"He is not incompetent": Dutton backs Taylor'. It's responsible economic management versus the shambles of those opposite.

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