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

Those opposite might not care about the cost of living, but the member for Newcastle does. This side of the parliament does. That's why it's the No. 1 focus of this side of the House. It's why we are rolling out tax cuts for every taxpayer, energy bill relief for every household, cheaper medicines, cheaper early childhood education, better pay and more rent assistance. This is why the ABS says that inflation would be higher were it not for the cost-of-living help that we put in the budget.

That cost-of-living help is a key part in the fight against inflation but not the only part. We've also turned two big Liberal deficits into two big Labor surpluses. We have made the coming deficit smaller than we inherited from the incompetents over there. Our responsible economic management is particularly important when our economy is soft and there's a lot of uncertainty in the global economy. Weakness in the Chinese economy and the big fall we've seen in iron ore prices are another reminder that we aren't immune from global economic volatility. That's why we take such a cautious and conservative approach to resource prices and revenue when we're putting our budgets together, and it's why we bank much more of any upside than our opponents used to do.

Government spending is obviously not the primary determinant of prices in our economy, but our responsible economic management is helping, not hampering, the fight against inflation. In this regard, Governor Bullock made three very important points about governments and about working together with the Reserve Bank. The first point she made was that the government and the Reserve Bank are completely aligned. The second point, which she has made in the last few weeks and months, is that our surpluses are helping the fight against inflation. The third point she made is that public spending is not the main game when it comes to inflation. The governor's testimony on Friday completely obliterated all the dishonesty we hear from those opposite, repeated by others.

These are the same people who left us with inflation much higher, and rising, and a budget full of waste and rorts and much bigger deficits. Now they want higher inflation and higher interest rates and lower wages and less help for people, because they hope nobody will notice that we're into the third year of a three-year term and they don't have any credible or costed economic policies. They don't want anyone to notice that what they've said about nuclear, about housing and about supermarkets will push prices up, not down, and make things worse. And they don't want to come clean on their $315 billion of cuts and what those cuts would mean for Medicare, for pensions and for our economy more broadly. We are providing cost-of-living help that they don't support, surpluses that they could not deliver and responsible economic management that they wouldn't know the first thing about and that they couldn't be bothered asking about.

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