Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. What approaches have the Albanese Labor government changed to make budget management more responsible, and why is this so important?

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

I thank the member for Boothby for her question. The Liberals and Nationals made a mess of the budget, and we are cleaning it up. Our responsible budget management is rebuilding our nation's finances and leading to smaller deficits, less debt and lower interest costs. We are returning 87 per cent of revenue upgrades. We found $40 billion in savings and reprioritisations, compared to zero dollars in the last budget from those opposite. We are forecasting a budget improvement of more than $143 billion over the four years to 2025-26 from the last budget they delivered. The improvements in the budget are a direct and a deliberate result of the actions taken by this Albanese Labor government.

As we've said, a stronger budget isn't just an end in itself; it is a foundation for everything we want to do for our people and for our society. It allows us to provide responsible cost-of-living relief to people who are doing it tough and to invest in the capabilities of our people and the capacity of our economy into the future. Importantly, our responsible budget takes pressure off inflation, a fact acknowledged by the Reserve Bank governor. A week before the budget was handed down on 9 May, the member for Hume issued a press release that said:

The test for this Budget will be to balance the budget …

We are now eight days before the end of the financial year, and we are on track to deliver the first surplus in 15 years. Those opposite were forecasting a $78 billion deficit for the same year. What's clear is that we wouldn't be anywhere near a surplus without our spending restraint, our savings and our decision to return most of the revisions of revenue to the bottom line.

When those opposite came to office, they promised a string of surpluses. They said:

… we will deliver a surplus in our first year and every year after that.

We all know how that turned out: they went zero for nine—doughnuts! The great irony of Australian politics is that the Liberals talk about surpluses and the Greens talk about social housing and in the last decade neither has delivered any of either. In fact, those opposite delivered more consecutive deficits than any government since the 1920s. They delivered the biggest deficits since Federation. It was a decade of debt, a decade of deficit and a decade of disappointment. That's because surpluses aren't made of mugs and they aren't made of memes. They're delivered through the responsible economic management and spending restraint that would be unrecognisable to the economic failures who sit over there. We take responsibility for cleaning up the mess that they left with the budget.