Dr CHALMERS (Rankin—Treasurer) (14:31): If he's angry at inflation with a three in front of it, he must have been absolutely filthy about the six per cent that they left us with. When we came to office, inflation had a six in front of it. Now it's got a three in front of it, it's still too high. We acknowledge that it's still too high with a three in front of it, but it's almost half what we inherited from those opposite, and I think that more than anything explains why the shadow Treasurer hardly ever gets any questions. The truth is that when we came to office there were bigger deficits, there was more than a trillion dollars in Liberal debt. We were paying too much in interest on the debt. We had almost nothing to show for all the waste and rorts for which the shadow Treasurer was the poster child in the former government. So we have spent two years cleaning up the mess that we inherited from the— The SPEAKER: The Treasurer will pause. The member for Hume will state his point of order. Mr Taylor: It is relevance. The Treasurer has been begging for a question about his budget that sank without a trace. You made an excellent earlier ruling about history. Can I ask you make a similar ruling in this instance? The SPEAKER: The question contained information regarding the budget, inflation and a whole range of other points. So far, the Treasurer has been directly relevant. Mr Taylor: I'm talking about the relevance. The SPEAKER: You can't ask about data in questions without the context of that, so I'll allow him some latitude. He is being directly relevant in terms of the topic and the issue. You may not like the answer, but he is being directly relevant. He won't be going through the history of what's happened in the past 10 years, but he's obviously able to talk about how we got to where we are. The Treasurer has the call. Dr CHALMERS: Without a hint of self-awareness, the shadow Treasurer talks about something that sank without a trace. The least relevant person in the parliament wants to get up and talk about relevance. He asked me about inflation and he asked me about the budget. The budget was designed to put downward pressure on inflation, and our responsible economic management is one of the reasons why inflation is almost half what we inherited from those opposite, when the shadow Treasurer was the most embarrassing part of an embarrassing government. Inflation is lower now than when we came to office. We've turned two big Liberal deficits into two Labor surpluses. We've improved the bottom line by $215 billion. Debt this year is $150 billion lower than what we inherited. Next year it'll be $185 billion lower than what we inherited. That means we'll avoid $80 billion in interest costs on the debt that they racked up. Because of all of that—because of that responsible economic management—we are making welcome and encouraging progress on the big economic challenges that we inherited when we came to office two years ago. I am the first to acknowledge that we would like inflation to moderate further and faster. We've made that clear on a number of occasions. That's why the budget has cost-of-living help which is designed in a way to be part of the solution to our inflation challenge, not part of the problem. It's why we're managing the budget in a responsible way, cleaning up the mess we inherited from those opposite. At the same time we recognise we've also got a growth challenge in our economy as well. We're fighting inflation without smashing the economy. We've seen some progress since we came to office. If those opposite were still in government, inflation would be higher, debt and deficit would be bigger and the economy would be even weaker.