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

I thank the member for Bendigo for her question and also for her focus on the cost of living, which saw her decisively returned to this place at the election. Today we did get an outstanding set of inflation numbers for the June quarter and also for the month of June. Those new figures from the ABS showed that headline and underlying inflation have now both fallen to their lowest levels in almost four years. This was better than most economists were expecting, and it is better than the forecasts which were in the budget I handed down in March. Headline inflation is 2.1 per cent through the year to June, down from 2.4 per cent to March. Headline inflation has now been in the band for a full year, as the Prime Minister said. Trimmed mean inflation is 2.7 per cent, down from 2.9 per cent. Monthly inflation is now below the Reserve Bank's target range.

These are really welcome, and they are really encouraging numbers. When we came to office, headline inflation was 6.1 per cent and rising. It's now about a third of that. When we came to office, underlying inflation was 4.9 per cent and rising. It's now almost half of that. These numbers are a very powerful generation of the progress that Australians have made together in the fight against inflation—quarterly and monthly inflation down, headline and underlying inflation down, goods and services inflation down, tradeable and non-tradeable inflation down. Today inflation has come down on all of the major measures, and that is a very welcome development.

It's especially welcome when you consider that Australians have made this progress at the same time as more Australians are in work, earning more and keeping more of what they earn. No major advanced economy has achieved what Australia has been able to achieve—inflation in the low twos, unemployment in the low fours and three years of continuous economic growth. At the same time that inflation is going up in the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, it's coming down here in Australia.

We've got real wages and living standards growing again. We've delivered two surpluses. We got the debt down, and interest rates have been coming down as well. But we know that there is more work to do, we know that there are still persistent structural issues in our economy, we know the global environment is uncertain, we know that growth is soft in our economy, and we know that people are under pressure. That's why we're rolling out more cost-of-living relief this month. It's why we are focused on making sure that we can make our economy more productive and more resilient and our budget more sustainable. It's why responsible economic management is a defining feature of this government, and you saw the fruits of that today in the inflation numbers.

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