Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition says ‘rubbish’. Sixteen-year highs—that is in fact the truth. We had in the March 2008 quarter 4.2 per cent inflation. Anyone around the world looking at the emergence of the inflation genie from the bottle has to ensure that they deal with a problem before it becomes much bigger and begins to plague the totality of the economy. That is where responsible economic management lies—and, can I say, the International Monetary Fund is of a similar view. Presumably those opposite, who have a higher wisdom than the IMF, a higher wisdom than most economic commentators in the country, a higher wisdom than the Treasury and others, believe that inflation is purely a fairytale and a charade. The member for Higgins, I am sure, had much to say about this in his intervention in the budget debate today, joining the three-ring circus of the Liberal Party leadership race.

Then we go to the second pillar of this budget strategy. We are fighting the fight against inflation through bringing about a responsible government surplus and attacking government expenditure, despite the fact that those opposite have argued there is no economic case for cutting government expenditure—that is their bottom line, that there is no economic case for cutting government expenditure. We will in fact take, by contrast, a responsible course of action. The second pillar lies in helping working families under financial pressure—about whom those opposite said, ‘Working families have never been better off.’ Those opposite happily supported that proposition. That is how you describe working families, and you add to that by saying that working families do not have an inflation problem. Well, they do have an inflation problem, and our responsibility in the framework of this budget is to ensure that those families get relief through the tax system, get relief through the childcare tax rebate system, get relief when it comes to education costs and health costs endured by families and get relief when it comes to the challenge of housing affordability.

Then there is the third pillar. The third pillar is this area of systemic neglect on the part of those opposite. How do you invest in this nation’s long-term productive potential? What do you do about the enormous backlog in infrastructure, the skills deficit and, right across, the needs of our health and hospital system? Responsible governance, presiding over the revenue windfall that those opposite had off the back of the resources boom over the last half-decade—

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