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

My question is to the Treasurer. New Roy Morgan research has found that, in the three months to June this year, 1.43 million Australians were at risk of mortgage stress, so why does the government's so-called wellbeing framework measure mortgage stress using data that ends in 2020? Why is this Treasurer so out of date and out of touch?

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

Order! The Member for Deakin and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy will cease interjecting.

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

Those opposite may not care about the wellbeing of our people and our communities, but we do. As the wellbeing framework that I released, Australia's first ever national wellbeing framework, acknowledged in the report—if the member had actually taken the time to read it—people are under the pump. One of the reasons why people are under additional pressure is that interest rates started going up before the election and continued after the election, for all of the reasons that intelligent people in this parliament are aware of. So he can ask all the questions he likes. It takes quite a bit of effort to get him out of his hole and ask a question. I think he's asked one question about the budget in the months since the budget was handed down, so I am happy to take his questions.

When it comes to the cost of living more broadly, he asked me about the pressure on Australian families from higher interest rates and inflation, which peaked in quarterly terms on their watch, and the global economic uncertainty that we are seeing. One of the reasons why this is the least coherent, least convincing and least credible opposition on the economy in living memory is that it took them 80 days to tell us how much their budget reply cost. Phileas Fogg got around the world in 80 days. It took 80 days for those opposite to tell us how much their policies would cost.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

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

The Treasurer will pause for a moment. Whoever is interjecting can cease that immediately, and I'll hear from the member for Hume on a point of order.

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

On relevance: the question was very specific. It asked why the wellbeing framework was so out of date and out of touch.

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

I call the Treasurer, in continuation.

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

As I acknowledged at the start of the question, the wellbeing framework itself says that Australians are under pressure. One of the sources of that pressure is higher interest rates. We made that clear. One of the reasons that we are so serious about this wellbeing framework is that we want to make sure that the data that we rely on to make good decisions in our economy is as good as it can be. We will continue to refine the wellbeing framework in ways that I said we would on the day that it was released.

I'll tell you what won't be happening. We won't be taking lectures about the economy from that party, where we have the Leader of the Opposition saying we should be spending more on cost-of-living help. The shadow Treasurer says we should be spending less on cost-of-living help. Then we've got the shadow finance minister, who said that she read one of my speeches and said I was heading in the right direction. They've got three different spokespeople and three very different positions. Their time would be much better spent getting some coherence and some credibility in their approach to the economy. It has been entirely missing.

We have spent a big chunk of our first year in office trying to clean up the mess that they left of the economy and the budget. Look at the scoreboard: you've got unemployment at 3½ per cent; you've got the first surplus in 15 years; we're rolling out cost-of-living help; and inflation is moderating from the quarterly peak that we saw under the incompetence that we look at now opposite.