Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor government delivering cost-of-living relief and managing the economy responsibly? What economic approaches has the government ruled out?

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

Thanks to the member for Macquarie for her championing the cause of 67,000 people in her local community who got a tax cut this week because of this Prime Minister and this Labor government. It shows how focused we have been in the course of the last week in rolling out substantial, meaningful and responsible cost-of-living relief to ease the pressures that we know people are under.

It has been an important week when it comes to the economy. On Friday, we learned that we're on track to deliver the second surplus in two years—the first back-to-back surpluses in more than two decades. By Monday we were rolling out cost-of-living relief in at least five different ways, and yesterday we introduced the legislation for a future made in Australia. That's because our responsible economic management is all about relief, it is about repair and it is about reform: relief when it comes to cost-of-living pressures, repair of the budget mess that we inherited from those opposite and reform of our economy to modernise and maximise the opportunities coming at us in a world of global net zero transformation.

The last week laid bare, I think, the choice between us and them. There's cost-of-living relief from Labor, opposed by those opposite; renewables from Labor, reactors from those opposite; a future made in Australia or another decade of delay and denial; responsible economic management—

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

The member for Fisher is warned.

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

or the kind of nuclear negativity and angry incompetence that we hear from those opposite. They wouldn't know the first thing about responsible economic management.

On Tuesday, the shadow Treasurer was calling tax cuts handouts that would make things worse, after they voted for them. On Monday he said Australians have had five consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, when Australia hasn't had a negative quarter since he was a minister in the Morrison government. Last week he said core inflation was going down in Canada. The day after, new data showed it was going up. That was the same week he got rolled on reinstating stage 3. Last month he was rolled on public subsidies for nuclear reactors. In the same month, he said they supported tax breaks for small businesses all along, after they voted against them in the Senate. The year before, he said they supported energy bill relief all along, but they voted against it in both houses. In May he couldn't explain his party's migration numbers. Around that time, he said he supported people using their super for every investment that's available, which prompted another shadow minister to say, 'That's not our policy.' In April he said it's not the Reserve Bank's job to fight inflation. Is it any wonder that the opposition leader's most memorable grab of this parliamentary session was when he reassured the readers of the Sydney Morning Herald, 'Angus is not incompetent.' I beg to differ.