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

My question is to the Acting Prime Minister. Recently, the RBA has said underlying inflation has eased further across advanced economies more so than Australia. Interest rates have fallen in the United States, Britain, New Zealand, Europe and Canada but not in Australia. Isn't the reckless spending of this weak and incompetent Albanese Labor government fuelling homegrown inflation?

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

It's my only chance to get one from him—jump up at five minutes to midnight in question time. If the shadow Treasurer wants to make international comparisons, then let's make international comparisons. If Australia were to measure core inflation in the same way the US and the UK do, ours would be lower. If he wants to talk about movements in inflation around the world, he should be honest enough to say that inflation just went up in the US. It went up in Europe as well. If he wants to make international comparisons about inflation, he should fess up and say that our services inflation is lower than the UK and the US as well.

While he's at it, he can fess up and say that our inflation here peaked lower and later than the countries with which he compares us. While he's at it, he could concede for the House that interest rates are higher in the US, in the UK and in New Zealand. They're still higher than they are in Australia, and they went up by more. While he's at it, he could probably fess up to the House—while he's on a roll—that unemployment is higher in a number of the countries with which he compares us.

So the point that I would make again, for the very slow learner who was under heavy attack from his colleagues in the Saturday Paper on the weekend for having no direction, no coherence and no idea—and this is what they mean by it; when his colleagues are bagging him in the paper, this is what they mean by it. Australians know that when this government came to office, inflation was more than double what it is now. When this government came to office real wages were falling; now they've been growing for four consecutive quarters. They know that when this government came to office there were deficits as far as the eye could see, and we turned two big Liberal deficits into two big Labor surpluses—something they were unable to do in almost a decade in office. We are under no illusions about the pressures that people are under, but we also say that any objective observer looking at the Australian economy would acknowledge the progress that Australians have made together since the hole that they were left in under those opposite when we came to office.

So I say to the shadow Treasurer: try and get a question at the business end of the pack if you can, and try and ask me a question. Every time he jumps up here and asks about these dishonest international comparisons, he leaves out the key facts. That is precisely why his colleagues behind him are speaking to the Saturday Paper about a shadow Treasurer that only throws rocks, that doesn't have any direction, that doesn't have any coherence and that doesn't have any costed economic policies three years into the term.