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

I appreciate that, Senator Sharma, in terms of repeating that part of the question. I think we've always accepted that the government has a role to play in partnership with the Reserve Bank to ensure that inflation is heading down from when we were elected and get it back into band. Part of that is getting the budget in better shape. That's why our two surpluses, getting the debt down, getting interest on debt down, reducing the deficits—we've seen the most substantial turnaround in the UCB in a positive way since we came to government on record.

I know those opposite want to ignore all of those facts. We know that you promised a surplus and then never delivered one. We have. We have halved the deficit, and we are doing the hard work in ensuring we're getting the budget in much better shape and, at the same time, assisting households and Australians with cost-of-living help. We've done that. At the same time, we've repaired the budget. We are conscious of the role we play in our decisions on our budget, but we are proud of the record of getting the budget in better shape and providing assistance to households during periods when inflation was higher than we would've liked for longer than we would've liked.

We know that the job is not done. We know that there is more to do, and this government will do it. We will take the same approach we took in our first term, which is to look for savings where we can and reprioritise across the budget. If we get upward revisions to revenue, we will use that to pay down debt and improve the interest burden on that debt. All of that matters, and that's why we've taken that approach when taking our decisions. But we didn't have the same approach that those opposite had at the election, which was to slash and burn and hurt everyday Australians with their cuts.