Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. An average family is $2,000 worse off under this budget, with their mortgage going up by more than $1,000 since May. When can this family expect the government to deliver on its promise of cheaper mortgages?

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

Well, it's about time: two weeks and one day since the budget was handed down and the shadow Treasurer has now asked his second question about something to do with the budget. I welcome the question. I welcome his interest, even if it's belated and typically incompetent and misunderstood. Of all the people in this place who are qualified to ask questions about the cost of living, the shadow Treasurer would be in about 150th place or 151st place, or wherever we're up to now, because he is more responsible than anyone else in this place for the fact that energy prices are going up. There are two people in the world most responsible for what we're seeing in energy prices. One of them sits in the Kremlin, and the other one sits over there. What we saw from—

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

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

Order! The House will come to order. I give the call to the Manager of Opposition Business.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On relevance. You have allowed ministers a preamble but you've drawn them back to the question. The question was very tight. It was about mortgages. And the minister, the Treasurer, needs to respond to the question.

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

Can I ask the Treasurer to return to the question, given that he is now one minute in.

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

I am responding, of course, to the question about the cost of living, and I'll come to mortgages in a minute. When it comes to the cost of living, energy prices are a big part of that. One of the reasons why we've got higher energy prices than we'd like is that we had a decade of energy crisis, and the person most responsible for that is the shadow Treasurer. So that's the energy part of the cost-of-living challenge.

When it comes to mortgages, those opposite are either dishonest or they fail to understand two basic facts. First of all, when it comes to the quotes that they are using about the Prime Minister's launch in Perth, we were referring then and we're proud to have a policy for smaller mortgages and cheaper repayments with our help-to-buy policy, something that the—

Op position members interjecting—

Well, that's what it's about. It's about smaller mortgages and smaller repayments. That's what the policy's about.

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

The Leader of the Nationals will cease interjecting.

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

What really cracks me up, about the question from the shadow Treasurer, is that the New South Wales Liberal government has just legislated a very similar scheme, for the very same reason, that this government seeks to implement a similar policy. That's the first fact that either the shadow Treasurer doesn't understand or he's not being honest about. The second one is that interest rates started going up on their watch. They started going up in May 2022. It was very clear then, just as it's clear now, that the interest rates that people are battling to pay started going up on their watch.

So if you put it all together, when it comes to the cost of living, before the government changed hands, interest rates were rising, real wages were going backwards and inflation was going up, and a big part of the reason for that was the electricity price chaos and the energy market chaos—that the shadow Treasurer should come to the dispatch box and take responsibility for.