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

I thank Senator Hume for the question. I think the government has been very clear that cost-of-living pressures and addressing them in a responsible and reasonable way is a priority for this government. In fact, when Minister Bowen started to deal with the fact that we were going to have blackouts, from day one we've been dealing with the decade of delay, dysfunction and refusal to tackle the challenges that are now impacting households right across the country. So we accept that cost of living is the No. 1 issue for probably every household in this country.

As a government we have to look at the ways that we can ease that cost-of-living pressure in a way that doesn't add to inflation. I think the major difference—there are a couple of differences. The largest quarter of inflation was in the March quarter last year, which was actually under you when you were in government. That was the largest quarter, in terms of inflation growth.

The other difference is that you have a government that's actually dealing with the issues, rather than putting their head in the sand and pretending that everything was just fine. That is a major difference, in energy, in health, in child care, in energy prices, in the cost of medicines, all of these areas that we're dealing with, and that's whilst we've got a budget that's heaving with a trillion dollars of debt, while we're going through all of the terminating measures, the things that weren't funded properly—remember all that?—the zombie measures, that were never going to get through the Senate, that you had there bolstering your bottom line. We're fixing all of that. We're investing in those areas where we can make a difference to households without adding to inflation.