House debates Questions without Notice

Budget

Tuesday, 13 October 2026 House of Representatives

Jim Chalmers

Jim Chalmers Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer

2:17 pm

Thank you to the shadow treasurer for his rare question! I want to make three points about three recent developments. The first one is that, on Friday night, Fitch reaffirmed Australia's AAA credit rating. That means we've got the AAA credit rating from all three major ratings agencies and are one of only nine countries in the world that has that from the three agencies. That's the first development.

The second development is that, at the end of last month, we released the final budget outcome, which showed that the bottom line for that year was better than what we inherited and better than what was forecast at the election, and it's improved again since the budget. The deficit was $6 billion better than budget—very importantly, almost half of what those opposite left us—and, overall, the budget's $230 billion stronger than what we inherited. As part of all of that, public demand has eased more quickly than expected at the same time as inflation has picked up. That tells us that there are a number of other factors at play. All of those are facts.

The third development is also a fact, and the third development is this: on the weekend, the Leader of the Opposition went to the far-right conference in Brisbane. He had a shot there at Josh Frydenberg when he said—

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