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

I just said to the Deputy Prime Minister that I hope the shadow Treasurer asks me about productivity, and he has. There are three reasons I'm pleased he's asking me about productivity. The first reason is that the budget we handed down from this dispatch box a few weeks ago was more focused on the productivity challenge than were any of the budgets handed down by those opposite in the wasted decade of missed opportunities that preceded us. That's the first point.

The second point is that I'm told that the shadow Treasurer put out a press release today talking about productivity, and this is what he said about productivity. He said productivity is down by five percent since this government took office. So I checked out that number, and I'm pleased that I did. I want to tell the House why I'm pleased I checked out that number. It turns out that the five per cent number that the shadow Treasurer is using includes the March quarter of 2022. Now, we were elected in May of 2022, the first time. So I thought to myself, 'I wonder why he's including the March quarter of 2022 and pretending Labor was in office when the coalition was in office.' Let me tell you why he's doing that. It's because productivity in the March quarter of 2022 fell by 2.3 per cent, and that was the biggest fall in productivity in more than 40 years.

So it always pays to check the numbers. The shadow Treasurer got the fuel excise wrong, he got his fuel security policy wrong, he got the number of shareholders amongst young people wrong and he got the dual mandate for the Reserve Bank wrong—again and again and again.

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