Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Payman for her supplementary question. The budget was calibrated carefully to deal with the inflation challenging our economy. We knew we had to act differently from our predecessors to avoid making the inflation problem in our economy worse and forcing the RBA to go even harder on interest rates.

The October budget returned $114 billion of tax upgrades to the budget over the forward estimates. This is the government making a decision to return 99 per cent of the upward tax revisions for the next two years, when the inflation challenge is most severe, and 92 per cent over the forward estimates. This compares to the Howard-Costello government's average of around 30 per cent of the tax upgrades, and the former government's average of around 40 per cent. It was an important decision that we made. Treasury has analysed the economic impact of the overall revenue upgrades in the October budget—instead of being transferred to households rather than being returned to the budget—and that would have put significant pressure on inflation.