Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I do encourage my people to not yell out 'time'. There are enough behind her doing that at the moment. When we were elected, inflation had a six in front of it. It's now got a three in front of it. We turned two budget deficits into two budget surpluses, and we used them to pay down debt. That's just part of what we're doing for responsible economic management. As the Reserve Bank has said, the budget is not the main game when it comes to inflation. At the same time that we have got inflation down, wages are up and unemployment is low compared with what we inherited.

We'll continue to understand that there are real cost-of-living pressures on Australians, and that is why we have implemented a range of cost-of-living measures. The only cost-of-living issue they're interested in talking about is the cost of living with each other. That's what they're interested in, and they can't shut up about it.

What we're focused on is cheaper medicines, making sure people can see a doctor for free, making sure that batteries are rolled out around the country, free TAFE and getting wages up. These are all measures that we've implemented—all measures that were opposed by those opposite. We'll continue to engage in responsible economic management. We'll continue to make sure that we deal with the pressures which are there by having a focus on cost-of-living measures. But those opposite, who went to the last election with higher taxes and a higher deficit over the next two years, can't be in a position of doing anything other than—

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