Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's been a really interesting day. We've just heard that apparently the Reserve Bank governor was not telling the truth, because she was being polite, which frankly is a little bit patronising for a professional woman at the top of her career. During question time, we discovered that the member for Fairfax, who is now both the shadow Treasurer and the shadow Assistant Treasurer, doesn't know how interest rates are set. Perhaps he needs a better assistant. Anyway, while it may be inconvenient for an opposition desperate to politicise everything to deflect attention from their chaos and disorder, Reserve Bank Governor Bullock has in fact said that the drivers of inflation in Australia are strong domestic demand relative to supply, housing costs and market service prices, labour and non-labour pressures, temporary price movements and a tight labour market, which of course means we have low unemployment. You will note that government spending was not included in her comments, and I don't think she was just being polite. I think she knows her stuff. In fact, nor was it included in the Reserve Bank board's comments today, where the cause identified was in fact growth in private demand.

Let's not forget that the opposition, when they were in government, left Australia with inflation that was 6.1 per cent and rising. It's now much lower than that. They left us with higher spending, no savings and bigger deficits. And then most recently, as coalition opposition, they went to the election with a plan for bigger deficits, more debt and a plan to hike up taxes for every taxpayer to pay for nuclear reactors. We are focused on cost of living. They're focused on themselves. They oppose pretty much every cost-of-living measure to help Australians that we put forward over the last term of government, right down to voting against tax cuts for Australians. Meanwhile, we delivered two surpluses after a decade of deficits under them and paid down some of the Liberal debt we inherited from those opposite. The MYEFO showed the budget is now $233 billion better than what we inherited, and we found more than $114 billion in savings.

But, if the opposition truly thinks we should be cutting government spending, perhaps they could suggest exactly where they would like those cuts. Do they want us to cut health funding? We know they've tried to undermine Medicare since it was introduced, and, at a time when we have an ageing population with increased demands on the health system, we have responded by investing in Medicare urgent care clinics, Medicare mental health clinics, 1800MEDICARE, cheaper medicines, 60-day scripts and extra funding for the hospital system in our agreement with the states. So do they want to cut funding for health?

We know they neglected veterans, so maybe that's where those opposite think we should be cutting spending. When we came to government in 2022, there was a backlog of 42,000 veterans total and permanent incapacitation claims. These claims were sitting in the department for up to 18 months or more. They had not even been allocated to a worker for assessment, and I can only assume that's their idea of saving money—by not paying veterans' TPI claims. Shame on them for targeting people who've served our country, who, as we know, often only put their claims in when they're really desperate. But, when we came to government, we were appalled at their treatment of veterans, so we fixed the problem. We allocated an extra $477 million to process the claims, and those claims, paying veterans who've served our country what they are justly entitled to, have cost an additional $8.5 billion. So is that the government funding that those opposite think we should cut?

We know they don't believe in or maybe don't understand climate change and the need for energy transition, since 22 coal-fired power stations announced closure under them and they did nothing about it. Perhaps they want to cut funding for clean energy and instead spend squillions of government dollars on nuclear power plants. Perhaps they want us to get rid of the tax cut that will be coming in July this year and the one in the following July. We know they opposed our tax cuts in the last term of government, and they took a policy to reverse tax cuts and in fact increase taxes on Australians to the last election.

It really is easy to say 'cut government spending' with no detail. They don't seem to have learned from their detail-free policies at the last election, and they've reverted to a three-word slogan: cut government spending. But budgets are serious business, and spending cuts have impacts on real Australians. I challenge those opposite: give us some detail on what you actually think we should cut. Are you saying we should cut spending on infrastructure like roads? Should we cut on defence? Should it be education? Are we cutting the age pension or cost-of-living measures? You need to tell us what it is. (Time expired)

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