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

We've turned two big Liberal deficits into two big Labor surpluses. We've designed our cost-of-living relief to put downward pressure on inflation, not upward pressure, and we are providing the responsible economic management that they were incapable of delivering in nine years in office.

We know what's really going on here. What's really going on here is that the shadow Treasurer was disappointed and embarrassed last week because he desperately wants interest rates to go up, and they didn't. He desperately wanted underlying inflation the week before that to go up, and instead it went down. While the rest of Australia was cheering for our Olympians, he was cheering for high interest rates and more pain. He wants higher inflation and he wants higher interest rates, because he doesn't want anyone to notice that, in the third year of a three-year term, he still doesn't have any costed or credible economic policies. He still won't come clean on the $315 billion in cuts that he says the economy needs. He still won't tell people what that means for Medicare, for pensions or for the economy more broadly.

On this side of the House, we acknowledge that people are doing it tough. We are helping with the cost of living, we are repairing the budget and we are making our economy more resilient at the same time. Those opposite did none of those things. (Time expired)

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