QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Dr CHALMERS (Rankin—Treasurer) (14:38): Thanks to the member for Dickson for her great question, her big contribution and her outstanding representation of the suburbs of Brisbane. Just a little bit earlier this afternoon the International Monetary Fund released its World economic outlook report, and it makes a series of key points. First of all, the global outlook is fragile.

Secondly, global supply shocks are becoming more frequent, and the war in the Middle East is evidence of this. And thirdly, the conflict is causing inflation to rise right around the world. It's important to remember that, even though we've got a lot coming at us from around the world, we've got a lot going for us here in Australia as well.

We've got faster economic growth than all but one of the major advanced economies. We've had the lowest average unemployment of any Australian government in the last 50 years. We've also got a sliver of gross debt as a share of our economy compared with the major advanced economies.

That's because we have made some progress in cleaning up the mess left behind by those opposite and by Josh Frydenberg when they were in office. Think of it this way. In every single one of our eight budget updates we've had savings—responsible economic management.

In Josh Frydenberg's last budget, he had no savings. That's when inflation was higher than six per cent and absolutely rocketing. That's why the Leader of the Opposition rocked up to the far-right conference in Brisbane and said of Josh Frydenberg that he 'made the mistake of spending too much' when they were in office.

And now they're calling for more than $110 billion in extra unfunded commitments, and that's before you get to the train wreck of their migration policy costings. It is no wonder that he is being stalked by Josh Frydenberg outside this building. Another reason for that is that this is an opposition leader who calls for lower taxes and then votes against lower taxes.

This government is cutting income taxes for workers five times in three different ways. Those opposite have said they want to repeal those tax cuts and they don't want those tax cuts to flow. New figures that we've released today show that nearly 13 million Australians received $700 million in tax cuts in the first quarter of this financial year since our latest round of tax cuts started rolling out on 1 July, against the wishes of this opposition leader.

We are cutting taxes for workers, at the same time as we've made progress on the budget. We know that there's more work to do in the midyear budget update before the end of the year. We know that the global environment is uncertain, we know that we have our advantages and we know that the best way to go about addressing these challenges that are coming at us from around the world is to continue to provide the responsible economic management that this opposition leader would be incapable of and which Josh Frydenberg was incapable of as well.