Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a young bloke who grew up in Sunraysia in Mildura, I want to put on the record and clarify what the member for Mallee said earlier. The Labor Party does have your back. I will always make sure that that area has the attention of our relevant ministers, because it will always have a very close place in my heart, especially given the fact that I've still got quite a lot of family that live in the area.

It's a bit rich when the member for Hume comes into this place and talks to the media, peddling the same old tired lines about inflation going up because of our government's spending. It's been a good couple of months since the Treasurer handed down this year's budget, so I'd like to hope that by now the member for Hume may have gotten through at least some of the papers. He might have a fighting chance if it were released as an audiobook. The premise itself is absurd—and I'll enjoy going into why later—but first I'd like the member for Hume to scroll through the several targeted and calibrated cost-of-living relief measures that our government introduced in the previous budget or, better yet, any of the previous budgets that the Albanese Labor government has handed down containing cost-of-living relief. I'll be waiting to hear what you would like to cut out of the mouths and hip pockets of hardworking Australian families, all in order to impact inflation minimally, if at all.

Despite this, I'm sure that soon enough the member for Hume will come back into this place with the exact same topic, ready to have a crack at us again at MPI time. I guess to wipe out the shame of being around the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments in the cabinet room, you have to be a goldfish. Let me assist the member for Hume and, for that matter, anyone occupying that side of the chamber who might need a contemporary history lesson back from mid-2022.

Those opposite, after losing the election, fronted up to the parliament with a trust deficit and a moral deficit, and handed over a budget deficit of around $78 billion. They ran a budget deficit that large despite inflation starting with a six at the time of the last election. I do understand that people come into this place from very diverse walks of life. Some are good with numbers and some are good at doing the numbers, but I can't say that many of us would consider the member for Hume to be either one of those. In short, a $78 billion budget deficit when inflation was speeding away at six per cent was probably not ideal. This was coupled with gross debt soaring towards a trillion dollars when they handed over the keys to us. They'll blame it solely on the pandemic, despite debt accumulating faster after the worst of it. But that also doesn't quite explain why they still ran deficits of that size.

Years later, when inflation isn't even beginning to moderate, and after the Reserve Bank is about to start raising interest rates, the Albanese Labor government has reversed those deficit numbers all three times. In particular the budget deficit is back in the black. We have delivered back-to-back surpluses for the first time in nearly two decades not once but twice in a row, which is something those opposite couldn't achieve in nine years. This isn't some accounting trick or other tomfoolery, like when the member for Hume decided to amend the regulation to stop Australia families from knowing their power prices were going to go up under his watch with the DMO. While we are balancing the books, paying $80 billion less now in interest rate payments—larger than their last budget deficit—they still desperately want to cling on to a bit of hubris and think they are the responsible economic managers.

We are cleaning up the mess those opposite left, sure, but more importantly we are providing help where it counts for Australians who need it the most. That's what you get when you have a government that actually knows how to manage an economy. The member for Hume can dodge accountability all he wants by coming into this place with the same MPI. We are more than happy to keep jogging his memory. Don't try to hoodwink working families into thinking that the cost-of-living relief our government is delivering is somehow bad for the economy, when those families are doing it tough and need that assistance the most. The opposition may have made 'back in the black' coffee mugs when they never deserved to, but what Australia doesn't deserve is for those opposite to keep treating them like mugs.

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