Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor government's responsible budget management helping in the fight against inflation? What options were ruled out?

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

The member for Fisher! The member for Boothby will resume her seat, and she'll start her question again. I'm not sure how many times I have to tell the chamber this, but I will do it every single time, to call this out. Members know the importance I place on individual members rising in their places and asking a question, from the Leader of the Opposition to the crossbench to members of the government. To yell out when a member is asking their question is completely disrespectful to the member and also disrespectful of question time. So, the member for Fisher will leave the chamber under 94(a).

The member for Fisher then left the chamber.

And it will apply equally across the chamber. The member for Boothby will begin her question again.

Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor government's responsible budget management helping in the fight against inflation? What options were ruled out?

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

The member for Boothby cares about the cost of living, even if those opposite don't.

There were no surprises in the minutes which came out today from the meeting of the Reserve Bank board earlier this month. We are as a country are making really substantial progress on inflation, but we do need it to moderate further and faster, because people are under pressure, and that's something the government understands as well. Governor Bullock has made it really clear in the last week that the government and the Reserve Bank are aligned when it comes to the fight against inflation. She's also made it clear that we have the same objective here—to get on top of inflation—but we have different responsibilities as we go about it. But the responsibility we have in common is to get on top of inflation together without smashing the labour market or smashing the economy, which is a really soft, at a time of substantial global economic uncertainty.

Because we know that people are doing it tough and because cost-of-living relief is our highest priority, we're giving every Australian taxpayer a tax cut, rolling out right now. We're also giving every Australian household energy bill relief, rolling out right now. And we're making sure that medicines are cheaper, that early childhood education is cheaper, that there's rent assistance and also that people are getting the pay rises they need in order to provide for their loved ones at a difficult time. We've deliberately designed that cost-of-living relief to be meaningful and to be substantial and to be delivered in the most responsible way. That's an important part of our strategy, but it's not the only part of our strategy. We're also turning two big Liberal deficits into two big Labor surpluses, and we're working through the structural pressures on the budget. Government spending is not the primary determinant of prices in our economy, but we can help—and we are helping—and surplus is a part of that effort.

The points the Reserve Bank governor has made in recent weeks—that we are aligned as a government and a central bank, that we have the same objectives with different responsibilities, that public spending isn't the main game and that our surpluses are helping in the fight against inflation—absolutely obliterate the dishonesty peddled by those opposite and repeated by people who should know better. Those opposite want higher inflation and they want higher interest rates so nobody notices that they have no policies and no credibility in the third year of a three-year term. And they won't tell us where $315 billion in cuts are coming from and what that would mean for Medicare and pensions and the broader economy. We are fighting inflation with cost-of-living help that they don't support, with responsible economic management they know nothing about and can't be bothered asking about and with a couple of surpluses that they couldn't deliver in almost a decade in office.