Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Given that the shadow Treasurer seems temperamentally incapable of asking me a question, I've got to take my chances when I can! Since 25 October there have been two eclipses, one solar and one lunar, and there have been two questions from the shadow Treasurer to the Treasurer about the budget. Questions from the shadow Treasurer to the Treasurer after the budget are as rare as a very rare celestial event, so I've got to take my chances when I can and jump when I can.

Let me get this straight: one of the worst ministers since Federation, the member for Hume, in one of the worst governments since Federation—one of the least responsible when it comes to the budget, who racked up $1 trillion in debt and had almost nothing to show for it and who sprayed billions of dollars around to their mates in the interests of their political purposes and their political objectives—now wants to get up and talk about spending in the budget. I mean, give me a break. What was different about this budget in October compared to the budget handed down by those opposite in March? What we did is that when we got a temporary boost to revenue from high commodity prices we returned, for two years, 99 per cent of that upward revision. That means that over the forward estimates there's less debt in my budget over the forwards than there was in the budget handed down by Treasurer Frydenberg from this dispatch box. That has meant that our budget was geared towards the inflation challenge, because we know that high inflation is pushing up interest rates.

Treasury modelling released and reported on today shows that if we had spent that $114 billion of tax upgrades like those opposite would have wanted to do and would have done in our position then interest rates would be another 1.4 percentage points higher than they are. That has meant that the rising interest rates that we inherited from those opposite—interest rates started going up before the election, which might be news to the shadow Treasurer as well—would be higher than otherwise, had we not handed down such a responsible budget, and inflation would be higher than otherwise. That's why we put so much effort, at the same time as we kept faith with our election commitments on cheaper early childhood education and fee-free TAFE and all the other priorities in the budget, towards making sure that we showed spending restraint, which is completely foreign to those opposite. They used to spend 60 per cent of revenue upgrades. The Howard government used to spend 70 per cent of revenue upgrades. We spent one per cent over the next two years. That's how you hand down a budget that doesn't make the inflation problem worse.

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