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

As I acknowledged at the start of the question, the wellbeing framework itself says that Australians are under pressure. One of the sources of that pressure is higher interest rates. We made that clear. One of the reasons that we are so serious about this wellbeing framework is that we want to make sure that the data that we rely on to make good decisions in our economy is as good as it can be. We will continue to refine the wellbeing framework in ways that I said we would on the day that it was released.

I'll tell you what won't be happening. We won't be taking lectures about the economy from that party, where we have the Leader of the Opposition saying we should be spending more on cost-of-living help. The shadow Treasurer says we should be spending less on cost-of-living help. Then we've got the shadow finance minister, who said that she read one of my speeches and said I was heading in the right direction. They've got three different spokespeople and three very different positions. Their time would be much better spent getting some coherence and some credibility in their approach to the economy. It has been entirely missing.

We have spent a big chunk of our first year in office trying to clean up the mess that they left of the economy and the budget. Look at the scoreboard: you've got unemployment at 3½ per cent; you've got the first surplus in 15 years; we're rolling out cost-of-living help; and inflation is moderating from the quarterly peak that we saw under the incompetence that we look at now opposite.

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