Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Why is a methodical, consistent, responsible approach to managing the economy and budget so important? What are the consequences of not doing so?

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

The member for Barker is now warned.

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

Thank you to the wonderful member for Reid for her question. Over the past 12 months the Albanese Labor government has begun the hard yards of repairing the budget and building a stronger, fairer and more secure economy. Our responsible economic management is leading to smaller deficits, less debt, less interest costs and a forecast surplus for this year. At the same time, we're delivering cost-of-living relief for Australians doing it tough. Today's DMO confirms we've helped shield people from the worst of the energy price spikes. In an uncertain global environment, our methodical and consistent approach is building buffers against global uncertainty and making our economy more resilient to external shocks.

Contrast that with what we've heard from the Leader of the Opposition since his budget reply a couple of weeks ago. It's been two weeks since the budget reply, and the reason why we don't get any questions about the budget from those opposite is that their budget reply is already falling down around them in a shambolic mess. Let me give you a few examples of that. The big idea that the Leader of the Opposition had was to bring back Work for the Dole. The only problem with that is that Work for the Dole hadn't been abolished. It was in the budget. There are thousands of people participating in Work for the Dole, but he wants to bring it back. It's already happening, but he wants to bring it back. Two weeks ago he came up with this big idea about JobSeeker. He wanted to change the way JobSeeker worked. Two weeks later they still can't tell us how much it costs. Whenever they're asked, they say, 'We'll tell you later on, but we want you to support it now.' They have questions from up the back about how they want more people coming to Australia, and then, up the front, about how they want fewer people coming to Australia. That's because they've been busted trying to play two different tunes with the same dog whistle.

It still hasn't dawned on them that they're using a measure of inflation that strips out energy and food costs, which they're arguing is the main driver of inflation. It hasn't dawned on them that, when they argue about the $20 billion net policy impact from our budget, that is half of the net policy impact of the last budget that they had, yet they pretend ours is inflationary and theirs is not inflationary. They say they want smaller deficits, but they want to spend more money on defence and they want to give bigger tax breaks to people who've already got tens of millions of dollars in super. They said on budget night that they supported, all along, our energy plan. The only problem with that is that it's the same energy plan they came in here and voted against. This is the usual coalition bin fire of haplessness, hopelessness and heartlessness. They've gone from born to rule to born to rort. You see that in the trillion dollars of debt they left us with almost nothing to show for it.

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

The member for Riverina does not need to interject.