Mary Doyle (Aston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor government boosting productivity and investment in our economy? What alternatives are there?

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

The member for Aston knows that Australians are under pressure. That's why every member of this government is focused primarily on the cost of living and getting inflation down, and that's why progress has been so important. Inflation was 6.1. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, it's now more than half—back in the band for the first time since 2021. Underlying inflation is moderating. The Reserve Bank have lowered their forecast for inflation.

When we came to office, real wages were falling substantially. They are now growing—four quarters in a row. The gender pay gap has narrowed as well. A million jobs have been created. Unemployment is still in the low fours. Participation is at record highs. Our economy has continued to grow while most of the OECD has had one or more negative quarters of growth. Every taxpayer is getting a tax cut, and we're rolling out cost-of-living relief. And we've delivered two budget surpluses for the first time in almost two decades and saved $150 billion in Liberal debt.

Now, we've done all this without the support of those opposite but also without losing sight of the bigger structural issues in our economy at the same time. We do have that primary focus on the cost of living, but we're also focused on making our economy more productive. We had seen the weakest decade for productivity growth under those opposite in more than half a century. We want to turn that around, not with their approach, which is to make people work longer for less, but with our approach of boosting competition in our economy, building a more skilled workforce, harnessing data and digital technology, delivering care more efficiently, and maximising the benefits of the net zero energy transformation.

This government already have a big and ambitious agenda when it comes to productivity, but we also made three new announcements in the last week alone: a $900 million productivity fund with the states to incentivise economic reform; a new single front door for major investors to get capital flowing more effectively in our economy; and PC inquiries for each of the five pillars of productivity to help inform the next steps. And we'll have more to say about productivity and investment in and around the investor roundtable on Friday and the Treasurers meeting the Friday after that.

Australians know our priorities are cost of living and inflation, budget repair and investing in the future, but they also know that they will go backwards if this opposition leader unleashes his risky and reckless arrogance on the Australian economy. I was asked about alternatives, but we are deep into the third year of a three-year parliamentary term and they still have no costed coherent or credible economic policies.

With that, is it any wonder that in a profile piece in the Saturday Paper, when the colleagues over there were asked about the shadow Treasurer, they said that he had 'vacated the field'? They said that he had no 'clear, defined direction' and they said that he is 'just throwing rocks'. The time has come to come up with alternatives, to cost them and then to put them forward, otherwise we will conclude, as your colleagues have— (Time expired)