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

or the kind of nuclear negativity and angry incompetence that we hear from those opposite. They wouldn't know the first thing about responsible economic management.

On Tuesday, the shadow Treasurer was calling tax cuts handouts that would make things worse, after they voted for them. On Monday he said Australians have had five consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, when Australia hasn't had a negative quarter since he was a minister in the Morrison government. Last week he said core inflation was going down in Canada. The day after, new data showed it was going up. That was the same week he got rolled on reinstating stage 3. Last month he was rolled on public subsidies for nuclear reactors. In the same month, he said they supported tax breaks for small businesses all along, after they voted against them in the Senate. The year before, he said they supported energy bill relief all along, but they voted against it in both houses. In May he couldn't explain his party's migration numbers. Around that time, he said he supported people using their super for every investment that's available, which prompted another shadow minister to say, 'That's not our policy.' In April he said it's not the Reserve Bank's job to fight inflation. Is it any wonder that the opposition leader's most memorable grab of this parliamentary session was when he reassured the readers of the Sydney Morning Herald, 'Angus is not incompetent.' I beg to differ.

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