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

He's got a lot of nerve asking about incomes, living standards and inflation after the mess that they left us to clean up. If you look right across the board, inflation was higher and rising on their watch, living standards were falling substantially already when we came to office, and real wages were falling substantially when we came to office.

Now, having acknowledged that there was an issue with pressure on living standards, the choice for this parliament over the course of the last 2½ years was to help people with that or to leave them hanging. This side of the House has spent 2½ years with cost-of-living relief as its No. 1 priority, and at every single turn those opposite have voted against that cost-of-living relief. So how dare they come in here and talk about living standards, wages and inflation when inflation was three times higher on their watch; when real wages fell for five consecutive quarters, and now they've grown for four consecutive quarters on our watch; when living standards were falling by 1.7 per cent in the quarter of the election, three times faster than now; when living standards fell 14 quarters on their watch—

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