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

With the member for Hughes's three attempts at that question, she's now asked more questions than the shadow Treasurer has asked the Treasurer about the budget handed down a month ago in this place!

Thank you, Member for Fraser, for the question and for the economic firepower that you bring to this place. To Carol and her friends from the Sutherland shire: thank you for the conversation last night and for being here in question time today to witness this pretty remarkable spectacle, frankly.

Overnight the OECD released an updated outlook for the economy, and it contains more confronting news when it comes to global conditions. What they said in their report is that the global economy is facing mounting challenges: growth has lost momentum, high inflation is proving persistent, confidence has weakened and uncertainty is high. The OECD said:

The global economy is reeling from the largest energy crisis since the 1970s. The energy shock has pushed up inflation to levels not seen for many decades and is lowering economic growth all around the world.

So the report shows that the global economy has been reeling because of the biggest energy crisis since the seventies, brought about by Russian aggression in Ukraine, and the high and persistent inflation which has resulted has led to blunt and brutal application of monetary policy by the world's central banks, and that's having an impact on the prospects for global growth as well.

We know, on this side of the House, that the pressures on our economy are coming at us from around the world, but they felt most around the kitchen table. Australians are paying a heavy price for Russian aggression, but they're also paying a heavy price for a wasted decade of missed opportunities, warped priorities and coalition incompetence when it comes to the economy—the types of incompetence that have left this country with an aged-care crisis, a skills shortages crisis, an energy crisis, not enough to show for $1 trillion in debt and wages which have been too stagnant in this country for far too long. That's why the budget was all about making the budget more responsible and our economy more resilient to these international shocks. It's all about dealing with the aged-care crisis and dealing with the skills shortage and making the budget more sustainable; investing in skills and child care and all the other drivers of economic growth and participation in our economy.

This side of the House is absolutely determined to get wages moving again in our economy. One of the defining failures of the period in office of those opposite was the fact that ordinary working people were going backwards before government changed hands. We will make our budget more responsible. We will make our economy more resilient. And perhaps most importantly of all, the difference between this side of the House and that side of the House is: we want to get decent wages and living standards for ordinary working people. They seek to diminish them at every opportunity.

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