Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. How will the October budget help Australians deal with cost-of-living pressures and respond to the challenges facing our economy?

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

I thank the member for Holt for her question and I congratulate her on her first speech in this place earlier in the week. It has also been an important week in the economy: we had the interest rates decision on Tuesday, the national accounts on Wednesday, and today a speech by the Governor of the Reserve Bank. What those three events all did was lay bare the challenges that we confront in our economy right now, such as skyrocketing costs of living, falling real wages, labour and skills shortages, and issues around business investment and productivity—some of these issues which have been around for some time now. These were the key focuses of the Jobs and Skills Summit last week, and they will be the key focus as well of the budget that we hand down next month here in this place.

This is the complex combination of challenges that we confront as we put this budget together. Budgets are always about competing priorities. As always, the job for us this time around is to comb through the complexity and to make sure that we are satisfying our key economic objectives. Ours are very, very clear:

firstly, in the budget, to trim the waste and rorts which have been a defining feature of the budget for too long; secondly, to use that money to invest instead in the productive capacity of the economy to deal with the issues in our supply chains and to make sure that we can lift the speed limit on the economy so that it can grow without adding to these inflationary pressures; and, thirdly, by responsibly dealing, where we can, with the cost-of-living pressures that Australians confront right now, whether it be child care, medicine costs, TAFE fees or in other important areas, as well as getting wages moving again in our economy after almost a decade now of wage stagnation and deliberate wage suppression from those opposite.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Longman will cease interjecting.

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

The important balance to strike when we provide this responsible cost-of-living relief in the budget next month is to make sure that we are providing that relief without adding to inflationary pressures. So we are providing that relief in a way that also satisfies our broader economic objectives: in child care, cost-of-living relief but with an economic dividend and similarly with medicines and TAFE fees—and the list goes on and on—while also getting wages moving in a strong and sustainable way once again.

We want to make sure that we don't add to the pressure on the Reserve Bank when it comes to interest rate decisions. We want to take some of the sting out of inflation over the medium term, and the best way to do that is to provide that relief in a responsible way and invest in the issues in our supply chains. A wasted decade of missed opportunities, warped priorities and deliberate wage stagnation has left Australians, their budget and their economy more vulnerable. The budget will make them more resilient. (Time expired)