Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Holt for her question. I want to acknowledge, at the outset, her many years of representing low-paid workers and attempting to get wage increases for low-paid workers—an aspiration that everybody on this side of the House shares.

I'm asked about the importance of having a responsible, well-managed budget. Well, the answer is up there in the gallery. I want to acknowledge the students from Albion Park High School in my electorate who have come down to Canberra today to witness the passage of the first Albanese Labor government budget. The reason that we need a responsible government is there in the gallery; it's about their future, not about our future. It's about ensuring that they inherit a society in which they can put their aspirations and their dreams into practice.

Framing a budget in October 2022 is not going to be easy. International headwinds are against us. In the United States, Europe and Great Britain, we see inflation galloping ahead and economies sliding into recession. Australia is better set than most of those economies, but we are not immune to the impacts of what goes on amongst our major trading partners. Of course, it's not just the international economy and the international impacts that are going to make it challenging for us to frame a budget, because we have inherited an absolute fiscal mess from this mob on the other side—

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