Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

GALLAGHER (—) (): I'm sure those opposite are reading and understanding the inflation challenge that is alive and well across the Australian economy. And, yes, we have an inflation problem that we are not seeking to exacerbate with this budget. The Reserve Bank is increasing interest rates in order to reduce inflation and get it back to within normal range. The government took the very responsible decision in this budget to make decisions that did not make the work of the Reserve Bank any harder. The easiest thing to do would be to say that we could spend some of the upgrades that we got in terms of revenue. That would be the easiest thing to do. But what we did was bank 99 per cent of that, and where we did provide additional spending, we put it into services that did not increase the inflation problem in this country.