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

I thank Senator Stewart for the supplementary. Thanks to responsible economic management and spending restraint that would be absolutely unrecognisable to those opposite, we are on track to post Australia's first surplus in 15 years. Perhaps Senator Hume can get that mug out again—'back in black'! We loved the little video. We might need that mug! The Treasury and the Department of Finance will finalise their figures and release them in the usual way in the final budget outcome, but I can confirm we now expect our surplus for the last financial year to be slightly north of $20 billion. We've managed to do this at the same time that we've delivered billions of dollars of responsible, targeted cost-of-living relief without adding to inflation, an important focus of our budget, and we will continue to manage the budget responsibly, meet the needs of the Australian community and ensure that we're getting our budget back on track.