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

The member for Griffith is an outstanding advocate for those wonderful suburbs to the south of Brisbane, delivering every single day since she was elected for the people who sent her here. This government is all about delivery: delivering help with the cost of living in the most responsible way that we can; delivering two more tax cuts—three in total; delivering cheaper medicines and more bulk-billing; delivering student debt relief from this week; delivering smaller deposits and building more homes; delivering a 12 per cent super guarantee and boosting the low-income offset; delivering more paid parental leave and paying super on paid parental leave; delivering fee-free TAFE; and delivering cheaper home batteries and help with electricity bills. At the same time, we delivered two surpluses in our first year and a much smaller deficit in our third year in office.

It is a fact—from their own documents, which they released at election time this year—that, if those opposite had won the election, there would be less help for people doing it tough. There would be not tax cuts, there would be bigger deficits and there would be more debt. That's why nobody takes them seriously on the economy.

Even with all of the progress that Australians have made together on our economy in recent years—whether it's halving inflation, creating 1.2 million jobs, getting wages moving again or seeing interest rates cut three times this year already—we do know, we do acknowledge, we do understand that many Australians are still under pressure, and we will get a sense of that in tomorrow's inflation numbers. Economists expect that the unwinding of some state energy rebates will push the headline number up a bit tomorrow, and that's why they have encouraged us to focus largely on the underlying number. But, whatever those numbers tell us tomorrow, inflation will be much lower under us than it was under those opposite when they left office—when they were throwing more and more fuel on the fire when inflation was absolutely skyrocketing on their watch.

It's bad enough that they left us with a trillion dollars in debt, skyrocketing inflation and falling real wages. It's bad enough that they opposed cost-of-living help and voted against tax cuts for the working people of this country. Now, they want to push power prices up, not down. They want to smash investor confidence and weaken our economy with a position on net zero which is all about their internal politics and not about the national economic interest. What has become abundantly clear, as we finish the year, is that the opposition finishes the year focused just on themselves, recklessly divisive and hopelessly divided. The government finishes the year united, focused on the cost of living and working very hard to deliver every day for the people who sent us here.

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