Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. What progress has been made on the economy ahead of the release of tomorrow's national accounts?

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

Thanks, Mr Speaker. I know the member for Solomon won't mind, and I hope you won't mind, shouting out to my colleagues from the Queensland parliament who are up there, particularly my local member, Mick de Brenny, and my great mate Linus Power. The reason I raise the Logan members is that our community is getting a hard time on My Kitchen Rules right now, as I understand it, and, on behalf of the member for Logan, the member for Springwood and the member for Forde, we say to Lauren and Lilli: we are right behind you; we love our community and we believe in you, and you'll do a great job on our behalf.

Tomorrow, we get the national accounts for the June quarter. That quarter was defined by extreme volatility on markets because of announcements about tariffs out of DC. Economists expect that overall economic growth picked up a little bit in the June quarter, but not a lot. The private sector is expected to be the primary driver of growth because public demand was flat. We know that already. We'll see what the rest of the numbers say tomorrow, but we already know that, since this government was elected, inflation is down. We've delivered two surpluses. We got the strongest real wages growth in five years. We've got recovering living standards. Interest rates have been cut three times in six months. And we've got the lowest average unemployment of any government in the last half a century. Now, we are one of only half a dozen economies, advanced economies, that have grown every quarter for the last three years. Thirty-two economies have gone backwards at least one-quarter in the last three years, but we aren't one of them.

Growth is not as strong as we would like, but continuous economic growth in the circumstances we see around the world over the past three years is welcome. Our progress gives us a decent foundation to deal with the uncertainty which still surrounds us and the challenges which still confront us. We're working hard as a government to give people help with the cost of living—making medicines cheaper, cutting student debt, boosting wages and cutting taxes. But we know that there is more to do because people are still under pressure. We know that we have to make our economy more productive and resilient and our budget more sustainable. That was what the economic reform roundtable was all about. Already, in the last couple of weeks, we have taken action on some of the consensus that was reached there, on speeding up housing approvals, accelerating EPBC reform and abolishing nuisance tariffs.

If you look at our economy and you see the national accounts tomorrow, it is looking more and more like the soft landing that we have been planning and preparing for in our economy. But we know that there's more to do to ensure that we turn our recent progress on the economy into higher living standards for our people into the future. That's this government's focus, even if it's not the focus of those opposite.