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

I thank Senator Smith for the question. This government, since the day we were elected, has inherited a whole range of challenges, which I just alluded to in my previous question, and we have been addressing those methodically. At the same time, we've been cleaning up the budget, getting rid of the rorts and waste, repairing the budget and delivering those two surpluses that those opposite promised and never delivered. We're reducing debt, reducing interest on the debt, delivering those surpluses, reducing the deficits and fixing up all these areas of neglect that the Commonwealth had just walked away from in—for example—housing, infrastructure, aged care and health. In almost every area I think of, the Commonwealth had vacated the field.

What Australians see is their government dealing with all of these national and important challenges and, at the same time, keeping our eyes focused on them. What they see when they look over there is three parties fighting each other like an episode of The Hunger Games. No-one's quite sure who's going to come out in the final episode and be the person who remains alive—it's very unclear at this point—although we have some suspicion that it's at that end of the table from the way it's going at the moment. But what Australians know is that they have a government that cares about addressing cost of living, fixing the budget, dealing with all of those national and important challenges, tackling hard reform where it's the right thing to do, standing against those advocates for the status quo and delivering real change for all Australians. That's the approach we've taken in the last four years and that's the approach we'll continue.