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

Thanks to the member for Dunkley for her input into the budget that we were proud to hand down last night here in the House of Representatives. The budget we handed down last night was handed down in the service of our immediate priorities and also our generational responsibilities. It was a responsible budget which was all about helping people now get through a tough period at the same time as we invest in opportunities for the future. It had five parts. The budget that we handed down last night had five important parts.

The first one was to provide responsible cost-of-living relief, targeted towards the most vulnerable, in a way that didn't add to inflationary pressures in the economy. It was carefully designed so that it would take some of the sting out of these cost-of-living pressures without making inflation worse in our economy.

The second part of the budget that we handed down last night was historic game-changing investments to strengthen Medicare, including the tripling of the bulk-billing incentive. All of us are aware of how hard it is to find a bulk-billing doctor in our own communities. The steps we took last night as a government invest substantially in addressing that problem.

The third part of the budget was our plans to invest in growth and to lay the foundations for the future economy, with a particular focus on the vast and immense industrial and economic opportunities of the clean energy transformation, as well as how that opportunity interacts with what we need to do when it comes to technology and industry and small business.

The fourth part of the budget was all about extending and broadening opportunity to more people in more parts of our country, particularly when it comes to disadvantaged communities and also to the economic participation of women. I shout out my colleague the Minister for Finance for her work on that.

And then the fifth part of the budget was about responsible economic management. For the first time in 15 years we're forecasting a surplus for 2022-23, a demonstration of the fiscal responsibility that we imposed on the budget, which is entirely foreign to those opposite who used to spend the proceeds of upward revisions to revenue. We've let them flow through to the bottom line so that we can save hundreds of billions of dollars of debt and save $83 billion in interest payments on that debt that we inherited from those opposite—a trillion dollars of Liberal Party debt.

The point that we are making is: as we invested the cost-of-living pressures, as we strengthen Medicare, as we strengthen our economy, as we invest in making our economy more equal, the most important thing that we can build all of that on is the foundations of a more responsible budget—not as an end in itself, but by getting the budget in a much better condition than what we inherited from those opposite, we can afford to look after people and invest in their future.

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