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

I'm pleased that the member for Fairfax has taken a brief break from undermining his own leader to ask me a question about the budget and about yesterday's decision by the Reserve Bank to keep interest rates on hold, partly because it gives me a welcome opportunity to point out an egregious lie that was being pushed around the gallery this morning on morning media by the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition said, completely untruthfully and dishonestly, that the Reserve Bank yesterday called out the government's spending when it came to the decision that they took independently at the board level. That never happened. In fact, government spending wasn't mentioned by the Reserve Bank governor yesterday. It wasn't mentioned in the board statement. The only mention was in the detailed forecasts which were released, which would downgrade their assumptions about government spending going forward.

From time to time, reluctantly, it's on us to point out the egregious lies being told by those opposite about our economy. If they were honest, they would say that the Reserve Bank governor drew no link whatsoever between the government's budget position and the decision that they took yesterday. But the governor, on earlier occasions, has made this point about the government's budget:

… we have got relatively low compared with many other countries, relatively low debt-to-GDP ratios. Our deficits aren't—we've had a couple of surpluses and the most recent deficit, in fact, is they're quite small as well.

That's what the Reserve Bank governor actually said about the government's fiscal position.

While we're on the topic of being honest about the fiscal position, if the shadow Treasurer were honest about the budget position, he would acknowledge and admit and confess that they ran nine budget deficits and we have run two budget surpluses. He would point out that he had average real spending growth at 4.1 per cent; we've got it at 1.7 per cent. He would acknowledge that there were no savings in their final budget, when inflation was absolutely galloping; we found $100 billion of savings, because we see that as part of responsible economic management. If he were honest, he would point out that debt is $188 billion lower, because of our efforts over recent years, than it was under the trajectory that those opposite left us with, and our efforts to get the Liberal debt down mean that Australians are saving tens of billions of dollars in debt interest. So I welcome the question from the shadow Treasurer. I hope he asks me a number of questions about this, because the contrast between our responsible economic management and the mess that they left us couldn't be clearer.

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