Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm Australia has a core inflation rate higher than the US, the UK and the euro area?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm asked about Australia's economic performance in comparison to other countries. Is that not the question? It's quite good because I was with Prime Minister Sunak just yesterday, and Prime Minister Sunak, of the Conservative Party, was saying to me how well Australia's going with our better inflation figures, with our better performance when it comes to jobs growth, with our better performance when it comes to, of course, our budget surplus as well. Indeed, if you look at the G7 countries and how we're going, our GDP growth of 2.7 per cent—

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

Order! I want to hear from 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: a very tight question—can the Prime Minister confirm Australia has a core inflation rate higher than the US in the UK and the euro area? Core inflation, not GDP, not waffle, very specific. If he doesn't know the answer, he should sit down.

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

The Prime Minister is one minute in. He is talking about international economic indicators, and I'll listen to him carefully. He's got two minutes to answer the question, and he is being relevant at this stage. If he strays, I'll make sure he continues to follow the right course of action.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They're not aware that issues like GDP and employment—all those issues—are relevant for inflation. What I know also is that the highest inflation rate for any quarter this century was on their watch—the March 2022 quarter—and their response was to pour money into the economy as a result of a budget that did not have a single dollar of savings—not one dollar.

When you look at our comparison with the G7, our GDP growth is the highest—higher than any G7 country: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK or the US. Our participation rate on employment, at 66.7 per cent, is higher than—guess what?—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK or the US. Our employment growth of 2.9 per cent is—guess what?—higher than Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US. Indeed, in the first 12 months that this government has held office, we have created, on our watch, more jobs than any government on record. That's our economic record: making a difference with measures such as the measure that we introduced on energy price relief, which is estimated by the Treasury to put three-quarters of a percentage point of downward pressure on inflation, something that they voted against.