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

My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer. In the face of growing economic headwinds, what is the importance of a responsible budget?

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Holt for her question. I want to acknowledge, at the outset, her many years of representing low-paid workers and attempting to get wage increases for low-paid workers—an aspiration that everybody on this side of the House shares.

I'm asked about the importance of having a responsible, well-managed budget. Well, the answer is up there in the gallery. I want to acknowledge the students from Albion Park High School in my electorate who have come down to Canberra today to witness the passage of the first Albanese Labor government budget. The reason that we need a responsible government is there in the gallery; it's about their future, not about our future. It's about ensuring that they inherit a society in which they can put their aspirations and their dreams into practice.

Framing a budget in October 2022 is not going to be easy. International headwinds are against us. In the United States, Europe and Great Britain, we see inflation galloping ahead and economies sliding into recession. Australia is better set than most of those economies, but we are not immune to the impacts of what goes on amongst our major trading partners. Of course, it's not just the international economy and the international impacts that are going to make it challenging for us to frame a budget, because we have inherited an absolute fiscal mess from this mob on the other side—

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and I hear them shrieking like a mob of political bin chickens, scratching around for relevance, but the fact of the matter is: we've inherited a trillion worth of debt and the biggest budget deficits that this nation has ever seen.

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

The member for Groom will cease interjecting.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will not shirk the responsibility of ensuring that we frame a budget for the future of the people here in the gallery. Our investment in skills, our investment in manufacturing, our investment in education and our investment in energy and a clean energy future will set this country up for the future. We will also do the hard work that this mob over here couldn't do, and that is to ensure we start to pay down the debt and deal with the structural deficit that this mob over here, squawking like political bin chickens, left us to fix up. The job is tough, but we are good for it. They talk about economic management but, over nine years, did none of it.

Honourable members interjecting—

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

Order. The House will come to order.

Opposition members interjecting—

Members on my left, when you cease interjecting I'll give the call to the member for Fairfax.