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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Last week the Reserve Bank governor said, 'We need a lot to go our way if we are going to bring inflation down.' She also said 'the narrow path is getting narrower'. On the back of Labor's third failed budget, core inflation has jumped up to 4.4 per cent and market interest rates have risen sharply. Prime Minister, why are Australian families paying the price for Labor's economic failures?

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

Order! The Treasurer will cease interjecting before the Prime Minister begins his answer. The Prime Minister has the call.

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

I thank the shadow Treasurer for his question, not to the Treasurer—he seems immune. There is a force field around this Treasurer; that is how bad his budgets have been. We have sat now for four weeks after the budget. In budget week we had no questions to the Treasurer; that was how good the budget was.

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

The Prime Minister will pause. The member for Bowman is showing complete disrespect with those sorts of remarks. We have had this debate already. He will leave the chamber under 94(a).

The member for Bowman then left the chamber.

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

It is a budget, as the Reserve Bank governor has acknowledged—quite rightly—that actually brought in a surplus. I know that is a foreign land to those over there. They have never seen a surplus; they have never visited it. They did buy a ticket. They even got the souvenir mugs, but all they produced was merch. We have produced lower debt as a result of turning the $78 billion deficit we inherited into a $22 billion surplus. We know that inflation is lower than it was when we came to office, and we know that inflation peaked in that March quarter at 2.1 per cent—the highest it has been for a very long period of time. What we have done is make sure our measures to provide that cost-of-living support are designed in a way that will continue to put that downward pressure on inflation. That's why our Energy Price Relief Plan, just like the last one we introduced, which had an effect of reducing inflation—that's why we've designed it that way. That's why we've designed fee-free TAFE that way as well—to make a difference.

We make no apologies for the fact that more Australians than they wanted will get a tax cut next week. We make no apologies for the fact that everyone in this room here, in this chamber, will get $4,500 less than they were going to get under their plan, and we have ensured that those people who are doing it tough will get a crack. Next Monday they will get a benefit, even if they are earning under $45,000 a year—something those opposite said they'd oppose before they even saw it. Then they said they'd reverse it, and then they called for an election to be held on it. If they're so hostile to it, why did they vote for it? They don't talk about that.

We are determined to make a difference. We want an economy that works for people, not the other way around. That's why all our cost-of-living measures are designed in a way to assist the economy and to lower inflation. (Time expired)