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

When there are good developments in the economy, I share the credit with the Australian people. And I, as Treasurer, and this government take responsibility for working through the challenges in our economy. Having taken responsibility for cleaning up the mess that was left to us by those opposite, I think it's time for those opposite to acknowledge as well and to take responsibility for the fact that they had inflation running twice as high as it is now, and they had huge deficits as far as the eye can see, and they racked up a trillion dollars in Liberal debt. They doubled the debt even before the pandemic.

So we take responsibility for working through the difficult issues in our economy. We're getting real wages moving again. We've got inflation down to half of what we inherited. We delivered a couple of surpluses. We got the deficit in the third year down to a fifth of what we inherited from those opposite. We got the debt down by $188 billion, saving Australians $60 billion in debt interest compared with what those opposite left them. If you look right across the board, average unemployment under this Prime Minister is the lowest of any government in the last half a century, and there is the progress we've made together on inflation, and the fact that unemployment is 4½ per cent—historically low, and part of an average unemployment rate much lower than what was left to us by those opposite.

We're under no illusions about the challenges in our economy. We take those challenges seriously, and inflation is one of them. But, more than acknowledging that people are still under pressure despite the progress we've made together, we're actually doing something about it. When Australians are under pressure, this building, this House of Representatives, has two choices: to do something about it in the most responsible way that we can—which has been the approach of this Albanese Labor government—or to oppose that cost-of-living help and to take the most irresponsible course of action, which is the course those opposite have adopted.

So I finish by saying this: if those opposite really cared about the cost of living, they wouldn't have opposed our tax cuts. If those opposite really cared about electricity prices, they wouldn't have opposed our efforts to give people a bit of help with their electricity bills. If they really cared about the cost-of-living pressures in communities right around this country, they wouldn't have opposed our efforts to make medicines cheaper. I could go on. But I hope they get the point: there's a difference between hoping for cost-of-living pressures, which is their approach, and doing something about them, which is our approach.

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