Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question goes to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Treasurer's claim in his previous answer that he has a fiscal rule to control spending, which is to bank most of the upward revision in revenue. However, according to his own pre-election budget, the upward revision in revenue was $8 billion. He plans to blow the lot—plus another $26 billion. Will the Prime Minister insist that his treasurer introduce quantifiable fiscal rules to stop his spending spree?

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

Before I give way to the Treasurer, I will take the opportunity to say that I'll insist that this treasurer continue to do the great work that he has done over the last four years and not follow the rabbits opposite down that hole which they dug year after year after they were elected in 2013 with a policy of producing a budget surplus for the first year and every year thereafter. They came in and slashed education and slashed health, and they managed to produce zero budget surpluses. They then went to the recent election—and this is some achievement—saying: 'We are going to have higher taxes for 14 million Australians, and we're going to have higher deficits as well over two years.'

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

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, on a point of order?

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On relevance, I asked the Prime Minister a very clear question about whether or not he will insist his treasurer introduces fiscal rules, given the facts I provided that he in fact blew the revision.

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

The Prime Minister is assisting the Treasurer, but I'll draw him back to the question to make sure that he's being directly relevant in the answer.

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

I was very relevant in saying that the position that I support—what I will instruct the Treasurer to do is to keep doing the fantastic job that he's doing. That is what I will do. What I won't do is be put off by the sternness that we used to see when the member opposite stood up supporting his nuclear power plan that would blow a hole in the budget worth hundreds of billions of dollars. I'll ask the Treasurer to add to the answer.

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

I'll give you three numbers. Under this government, we've banked about 70 per cent of upward revision to revenue. Under those opposite it was about 40 per cent, and under Howard and Costello it was 30 per cent. What that tells the House and the shadow Treasurer is that we banked most of the upward revisions to revenue and they spent most of it. That's why their fiscal rules in office weren't worth the paper that they were written on. They failed every single test that they set for themselves. They said they'd deliver surpluses, and they went none for nine—complete doughnuts when it comes to surpluses. We delivered surpluses in our first two years in office.

What matters here is the fiscal rules and also outcomes. We've been able to make some good progress cleaning up the mess that was left to us by those opposite; they left us a trillion dollars of Liberal debt and huge deficits as far as the eye could see. We turned two of those Liberal deficits into two substantial Labor surpluses. We will stack up our record on responsible economic management against those opposite's any day, and I hope that these questions continue. When I was told that the member for Fairfax gave a speech about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I confess that the word 'Wonka' was almost the word that came to mind!