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

Thank you to the wonderful member for Gilmore for her question. The member for Gilmore understands that, despite the welcome and encouraging progress we have made on inflation, we know people are still under cost-of-living pressure, and that's why we've put so much time and effort since we've come to office into putting downward pressure on inflation in our economy. It's why we are pleased that quarterly inflation is now around a third of what we inherited from those opposite. A key reason for that is the way we've gone about managing the budget and the economy in the most responsible way. We have taken pressure off inflation by running a tight budget. We had the first surplus in 15 years; we turned a $78 billion deficit into a $22 billion surplus.

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

We've seen the fastest and best recovery in the budget bottom line in the G20 comparing the year before we elected—

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

to the year after we were elected. All this is saving us on peak debt and interest costs. This is why the IMF, the Reserve Bank and others—

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

have pointed to the way our budget policy is working hand in hand with monetary policy.

It's also why the OECD and the Australian Bureau of Statistics have gone out of their way to say that our policies are directly reducing inflation in our economy. That's because we designed our cost-of-living help to take pressure off inflation rather than add to it. We know the combination of energy bill relief, early childhood education reform and rent assistance took something like half a percentage point off inflation last year. We know our tax cuts won't add to the inflation problem either and won't add to deficits, but they will boost labour supply in our economy. As the minister said a moment ago and others have said—the Prime Minister—getting on top of inflation, getting real wages moving, rolling out the tax cuts and paying super on paid parental leave, as Linda White and Peta Murphy urged us to do—all this is about ensuring people earn more, keep more and retire with more as well.

The reason why the new member for Dunkley sits on this side of the House and not on that side of the House is that we have a plan to ease cost-of-living pressures and they don't. If they had their way, inflation would still be galloping, wages would still be stagnating, there'd be debt and deficit as far as the eye could see and people would be working longer for less. The Dunkley by-election showed, and their behaviour today shows, their nasty negativity is no substitute for economic credibility. Almost two years in and they still have no alternatives except for the economic insanity of their uncosted nuclear fantasy. We reject their approach, we're managing the economy, we're managing the budget responsibly, we're making progress on inflation and real wages, we are repairing the budget, we are laying the foundations for growth and we are cleaning up the mess they left behind. (Time expired)