Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Fraser has fallen into the same trap that the Treasurer seems to be in and seems to not be able to get out of—this deep dark hole where they think that, when Labor resumed power in May 2022, the entire economy was bereft of vision, productivity and economic growth indicators. The fact is—and this is an absolute truth—Labor inherited a very good set of numbers, notwithstanding the pandemic that swept the globe, for which Australia was rated second in the world, according to the John Hopkins institute. We saved millions of jobs and tens of thousands of lives during the pandemic. That's what we did. The economic record that we produced was one which we should be proud of. The Labor surpluses were made possible by us and the very good prices for coal, iron ore and agriculture—three key export industries. These are three industries, I might add, that Labor are now trying to shut down.

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