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

My favourite part of that was the really embarrassed looks of the poor backbenchers who had to wave around the little pamphlet that contains substantially bigger deficits and much more debt! I pick up where the Prime Minister left off and remind those opposite that Moody's this week, and S&P Global not that long ago, pointed to Australia's low debt ratios compared to those of our peers as a reason to reaffirm Australia's AAA credit rating. And we have one of the three strongest budgets in the G20. Our debt as a share of the economy is less than half that of the US, less than half of Canada's, less than half of the UK's and less than a quarter of Japan's. We have less debt than any major advanced economy.

The really important point to make here—and I hope they're listening—is that most of Australia's gross debt today was racked up between 2013 and 2022 by those opposite. The overwhelming majority of the dollars of gross debt in the budget was racked up by those opposite. In fact, gross debt is $200 billion lower this year than the trajectory we inherited from those opposite. That means that instead of paying $35 billion this year in interest costs we'll be paying $28 billion—$7 billion less interest under this government than under the last budget of those opposite.

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