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

Thanks to the member for Aston for the way that she represents her local community and understands that cost-of-living pressures are the main game right now. When we came to office, inflation was higher than it is now and it was rising. Wages were stagnant, and that meant that real wages were going backwards really quite substantially. And the tax cuts were skewed to people who were already on the highest incomes. There were deficits as far as the eye can see and there was $1 trillion of liberal debt in a budget weighed down by waste and rorts.

We've turned two of those deficits into Labor surpluses. We created almost a million jobs. Inflation has come off substantially, wages growth has almost doubled and annual real wages are growing again on our watch. But we know that people are still under pressure, and that's why cost-of-living pressures are our primary focus. That's the big difference between our focus on cost of living on this side of the House and them ignoring cost-of-living pressures on that side of the House. We are rolling out meaningful, substantial and responsible cost-of-living help: a tax cut for every taxpayer, energy bill relief for every household, cheaper medicines, cheaper early childhood education and help with rent. We're also making a meaningful difference when it comes to people taking home more pay, earning more and keeping more of what they earn.

On our watch, the average full-time worker is now earning around $104,000 dollars. That's an increase of $8,273 a year or $159 a week since we were elected. That same worker is now getting a tax cut of $43.72 a week or $2,274 this year. Now, if the same worker had seen the same wages growth we saw from those opposite and the old stage 3 tax cuts that they had legislated, they'd be taking home $3,235 less per year than they are under us. That's $62 per week. They're earning more under us.

Those opposite want lower pay. They want less help with the cost of living. They want higher inflation. They want higher interest rates. They have absolutely no costed or credible economic policies, and they won't tell us where $315 billion in cuts are coming from and what those cuts will mean for Medicare, for pensions and for the economy more broadly.

We are focused on the main game on this side of the House, which is the cost of living. We're fighting inflation, we're delivering surplus budgets, we're rolling out cost-of-living help and, very importantly, we are ensuring that more Australians earn more and keep more of what they earn.

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