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

I thank Senator Smith for the question and for all the work she does across government, and for the good people of South Australia in representing them, and for the advocacy she provides on cost-of-living support and in the economic debate. So thank you very much.

It's an important question. When it comes to economic management, how we manage the budget and how we deliver on our commitments are all interlinked. When we came to government, one of our first priorities was to get the budget in much better shape. And we have done that. The budget is $233 billion better off cumulatively over seven years to 2028-29 than the budget we inherited. There's also $176 billion less debt than was forecast prior to the 2022 election, and we are saving the nation around $60 billion in expected interest cost based on those forecasts. That was the first bit: to try and get the budget in better shape.

We've delivered two surpluses, and we've lowered the deficits. That work continues. We've been finding savings and repairing the budget over time. That has allowed us to focus on those commitments we made to the Australian people in the first term: looking at how we get wages moving again; looking at how we address all of the failures of the health system, particularly with Medicare, due to the failure of those opposite to invest; and dealing with the investment in defence that we need—again, due to neglect from those opposite, who announced a lot of defence programs but never actually found the money to underpin and pay for those programs. The Deputy Prime Minister worked to get the defence program back on track with billions of dollars of extra investment to make sure that our national security is not compromised. We also looked at education. (Time expired)