Mrs PHILLIPS (Gilmore) (16:24) My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor Government's responsible economic management easing pressure on Australians while laying the foundations for future growth, and what approaches were rejected?
Mr CHALMERS (Rankin - Treasurer) Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you to the wonderful member for Gilmore for her question. The member for Gilmore understands that despite the welcome and encouraging progress we have made on inflation, we know that people are still under cost-of-living pressure. That's why we put so much time and effort into putting downward pressure on inflation since we came to office.
Mr Speaker, we are pleased that quarterly inflation is now around a third of what we inherited from those opposite. Now, a key reason for that is the way we've gone about managing the budget and the economy in the most responsible way. We have taken pressure off inflation by running a tight budget. The first surplus in 15 years turned a 78 billion dollar deficit into a 22 billion dollar surplus. We've seen the fastest and best recovery in the budget bottom line in the G20, comparing the year before we were elected to the year after we were elected. And all of this is saving us on peak debt and interest costs, Mr Speaker.
This is why the IMF, Reserve Bank, and others have pointed to the way that our budget policy is working hand in hand with monetary policy. It's also why the OECD and the Australian Bureau of Statistics have gone out of their way to say that our policies are directly reducing inflation in our economy. That's because we designed our cost-of-living help to take pressure off inflation rather than add to it.
We know the combination of energy bill relief, early childhood education reform, and rent assistance took something like half a percentage point off inflation last year. And we know that our tax cuts won't add to the inflation problem either, and it won't add to deficits, but it will boost labor supply in our economy.
Mr. Speaker, as the minister said a moment ago and others have said, the Prime Minister getting on top of inflation, getting real by just moving, rolling out the tax cuts, paying the super on paid parental leave as Linda White and Peter Murphy urged us to do. All of this is about ensuring people earn more, keep more, and retire with more as well.
The reason why the new member for Dunkley sits on this side of the house and not on that side of the house is that we have a plan to ease cost-of-living pressures and they don't, Mr Speaker. If they had their way, inflation would still be galloping, wages would still be stagnating, there would be debt and deficit as far as the eye can see, and people would be working longer for less.
Mr Speaker, the Dunkley by-election show and their behaviour today show that their nasty negativity is no substitute for economic credibility. Almost two years in and they still have no alternatives except for the economic insanity of their uncosted nuclear fantasy, Mr Speaker. We reject their approach; we're managing the economy, managing the budget responsibly, making progress on inflation and real wages, repairing the budget, laying the foundations for growth, and cleaning up the mess that they left behind.
