Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer. I refer to the Prime Minister's opinion piece on 24 April 2022, which read:

Australia needs a government that will accept responsibility and not seek to blame others …

The Prime Minister's first budget confirms electricity prices are going up by 56 per cent, inflation will hit eight per cent and unemployment is set to rise. Will the Prime Minister take responsibility—

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Hume will resume his seat. There is far too much noise. I cannot hear where the question is directed, and I can't hear the question. I'm going to ask the member for Hume to begin again, and I want the House to remain silent to show him the courtesy that he deserves. I give the call to the member for Hume.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Prime Minister's opinion piece on 24 April 2022, which read:

Australia needs a government that will accept responsibility and not seek to blame others …

The Prime Minister's first budget confirms electricity prices are going up by 56 per cent. Inflation will hit eight per cent and unemployment is set to rise. Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for a budget with no plans to deal with these pressures?

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I give the call to the Prime Minister, who will be heard in silence.

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

They say all roads lead to Rome. But all Rhodes scholarships clearly don't lead anywhere.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Members on my left will remain silent.

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

The shadow Treasurer had a moment of clarity recently. This is what he had to say about energy policy. He said this:

The development of interconnectors and transmission is critical to bringing new generation capacity into the energy system, while shoring up reliability and affordability across state borders.

Pretty good statement. Well done, Angus. Then he went on to say, 'Thousands of kilometres of new transmission is likely to be needed to connect new generation.' So you compare the rhetoric that they have and they had before the election, where they spoke about—they were going to have all of this new generation but, in fact, they had four gigs out and only one gig in. They now are trying to run a scare campaign about transmission and that we should have an energy system without transmission that completely contradicts what they said before the election. They didn't do anything about it. They had some 22 energy policies and didn't land one. So it's no wonder that my friend the Treasurer, here—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Macnamara will cease interjecting.

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

and we've only got one, can't get a question from the shadow Treasurer. All we get is recycled questions from the bloke who was the largest failure—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister will pause.

Honourable members interjecting—

When the House comes to order, I'll hear from the member for Hume on a point of order.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Relevance. It was a very clear question: whether the Prime Minister will take responsibility for his failed budget.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Resume your seat. The question was broad about the Prime Minister's budget, about inflation, about prices and other aspects, and—

Order, Deputy Leader of the Opposition. While I'm speaking and ruling on the member for Hume, I'd ask the House to remain silent. The Prime Minister is in order and I give him the call.

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

In the point of order, the shadow Treasurer then finally got around to asking a question about the budget. But he did it in a point of order rather than ask the question to the Treasurer, because he's simply not up to the task of taking on the Treasurer when it comes to economic policy.

Those opposite were responsible for a decade of denial, a decade of failure, 22 different policy announcements and didn't land one—not a single one—because they were too interested in the power struggles of their internals and not worried about powering up Australia by fixing up the energy sector. We will do it. (Time expired)

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Could the Treasurer explain to the House, in three minutes or less, how the budget responds to the challenge of rising inflation?

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

Thanks to the member for Bruce for asking that question with characteristic panache and class. The budget we handed down nearly two weeks ago was overwhelmingly influenced by the inflation challenge, and it was primarily a response to that challenge. It had to be an inflation focused budget because inflation is the No. 1 challenge facing our economy, right now, just as it is for economies right around the world. That meant that the budget had to deliver cost-of-living relief, it had to invest in the drivers of the economy and it had to start cleaning up the mess that was left to us from the wasted decade, and it had to do all of those things without adding to inflation. That's exactly what our first budget delivered by providing targeted cost-of-living relief in areas like cheaper early childhood education and cheaper medicines; by investing in the capabilities of our people and the capacity of our economy with fee-free TAFE and more university places; with the National Reconstruction Fund and our Powering Australia plan; and, most importantly of all, when it comes to this inflation challenge, keeping spending under control and finding responsible savings in the budget.

This responsible approach to the budget marks a total change from what we got from those opposite over the previous nine years. In our budget, there is an average 0.3 per cent annual real spending growth over the forward estimates compared to an average of 2.6 per cent a year in their budgets—and that was before the pandemic. More than 90 per cent of tax revenue upgrades are returned to the bottom line in our budget, compared to 40 per cent by the previous government. There is $22 billion of savings in our budget, but not a single cent of savings on the expenditure side in the March budget handed down by those opposite. We knew we had to act differently from our predecessors. We knew we had to be more responsible, and, because we did that, this budget doesn't make our inflation problem worse. In fact, if we had done what they did and spend all of the revenue upgrades—on 14 occasions they spent every cent of the revenue upgrades—that would have added another half a percentage point to inflation over the next year and interest rates would have to go even higher as a consequence.

So the budget was right and responsible. It was defined by the times and it was designed for the times. It will help steer us through the difficult days that are ahead of us so that we can build an economy that does get wages moving again after a wasted decade of wage stagnation. It will deal with the aged-care crisis that we inherited, the energy policy chaos that we inherited and the labour shortages that we inherited, and it will begin to deal with the trillion dollars of debt that those opposite left behind with almost nothing to show for it.