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

I thank Senator Smith for the question. We are very confident that the budget is providing cost-of-living relief and important investment into services like Medicare—

Give me a second! In fact you've given me 12 seconds before the interjections start, so I appreciate that, Senator Cash—without adding to inflation. There is a fair bit of commentary about the budget, as you would expect two days later. However, Treasury provides advice to the government and supported us in finalising our budget decisions, and Treasury's very clear assessment is that this budget will not add to inflationary pressures, and that is clear right through the budget papers. The cost-of-living package is expected to directly reduce inflation by three-quarters of a percentage point in 2023-24, and I would remind those opposite that a reasonable proportion of the spending that's happening in this financial year is to do with the legacy pressures that we inherited from you. So it's spending that was continuing up and then it was stopping, and we are keeping those services and those agencies going.

I would note that it would be very unusual to get all the economists in Australia, particularly those that provide commentary, to agree on one point. It's thoroughly unsurprising that you would have a range of views. I note that there have been comments from Mr Evans from Westpac. In fact I had some discussions with Westpac yesterday, and I have a direct quote from Mr Evans where he says that he believes the policies—that's the investments we were making—were necessary, and he said, 'I don't expect them to put upward pressure on interest rates in the near term.'