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

The last budget from those opposite delivered precisely zero dollars in savings. That's the sort of restraint that we showed in the October budget, and we'll see it again in the May budget. For all of these reasons, the Governor of the Reserve Bank made it clear in the middle of February that we aren't adding to inflationary pressures in our economy. If anything, we're actually moderating inflation with our energy price plan.

We have a lot going for us in this country but we have got a lot coming at us as well. The budget in May, like the budget in October, will have common elements: the combination of near-term and longer-term priorities; the best combination of relief, repair and restraint; and a premium on the quality of spending, not just the quantity of spending so that we can continue to invest in our people and their futures and clean up the mess that we were left by those opposite.

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