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

I know, from engaging with the member for Melbourne on a whole range of issues, what a wonderful advocate she is for the people of that great city. Really the biggest difference at the last election was on economic policy, because we had a plan to cut taxes, to help with the cost of living, to repair the budget and to invest in the future, and those opposite had a policy for higher income taxes, bigger deficits and more debt. That's what their election document made clear when the member for Fairfax and his nuclear reactors got together with the economic incompetence of the member for Hume and together they nuked the opposition's economic credibility. That's one of the reasons why sensible Liberals like Malcolm Turnbull have said that those opposite have run off into la-la land. This is why Peter Costello told Troy Bramston:

At the last election, they got themselves into a position where they were proposing to increase income taxes, run bigger deficits, no real plan to—

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