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

As I have said publicly and as the Treasurer has said, we've taken a conservative estimate in terms of the iron ore price and how it feeds into the budget, and we do that for good reason. We are seeing a decline in the iron ore price at the moment. It's tracking, I think, slightly ahead of what the Treasury forecasts are. But the work we've done on the budget is broader than just the iron ore price. The fact that, with our budget, we've turned Liberal debts into Labor surpluses has been because we have gone through and found what we considered wasteful spending and returned that to the budget. It has been because of the resilience of the labour market. The fact that more people are working and working more hours has been good for the budget as well, and, of course, it's good for those individuals. The fact that people are earning more is also good for the budget. We wanted wages to move again; they're moving again.

Not everything is determined by the iron ore price. Obviously, it's a significant contributor to the budget, and we are able to deliver a lot of services because of revenue to the budget. But we will manage the budget in a responsible and methodical way as we have been—finding savings where we can; prioritising services and cost-of-living programs where we can, where it doesn't add to inflation; and providing tax cuts to every taxpayer in Australia. They have been able to be found within the space in the budget. We will continue to do so.

As I just said in my previous answer, we have turned hundreds of billions of dollars of Liberal debt into Labor surpluses—two Labor surpluses. Gross debt will peak 9.7 per cent lower than was expected when you were in government, and we are paying $80 billion less on our interest bill because of the steps that we've taken to address the budget. (Time expired)