Dr CHALMERS (Rankin—Treasurer) (14:37): In terms of people doing it tough, I think it speaks volumes that, when the home affairs minister was talking about a $16,000 pay cut, those opposite were chuckling about it, and doesn't that just go to the core of their approach and the difference between their approach and our approach? The SPEAKER: Order! The Treasurer will return to the question. Dr CHALMERS: We do more than acknowledge, as he did in his question, that people are doing it tough. We are acting on it. We're helping with the cost of living, and we're getting wages moving again and we're getting real wages moving again as a consequence of our efforts. If the commentary that the shadow Treasurer read out is true now, imagine how much worse it would be if we were still running the huge deficits that we inherited from those opposite. They were running massive deficits when we came to office, and we turned two of those huge deficits into two substantial surpluses. The Reserve Bank governor has made it really clear that those surpluses are helping in the fight against inflation. When we came to office, the most recent budget from those opposite had zero savings in it. We found almost $80 billion in savings, and we put that in our three budgets. When those opposite were spending almost all of the upward revision to revenue from a stronger labour market and stronger commodity prices, we banked almost all of it. We did that deliberately. That's been an important part of our fiscal strategy which has helped us clean up a lot of the mess that we inherited from those opposite. And because of our efforts, we're saving tens of billions of dollars in interest repayments, which is also helping the budget and making room for us to provide cost-of-living help and invest in housing, energy and skills and in a future made in Australia, and those are important objectives. When I'm asked about government spending, we're in the third year, now, of a three-year parliamentary term. It is long past time. If those opposite think there is $315 billion too much spending in the budget then it's incumbent on them to come clean on their cuts and to tell us where those cuts will come from. He asked me about government spending. I'm allowed to talk about the implications— The SPEAKER: No, the Treasurer can pause because the member for Hume is entitled, under the standing orders, to raise a point of order. Mr Taylor: My point of order is on relevance. The question did not ask about alternative approaches, particularly alternative approaches that exist in the Treasurer's imagination. The SPEAKER: The Treasurer was asked about government spending, so if he wants to do a compare and contrast, he'll need to make it relevant to government spending. Dr CHALMERS: The point I'm making is that those opposite wouldn't know the first thing about responsible economic management. They said that they would deliver a surplus in their first year and every year after that, and they went none for nine. We've been here for two years and we've delivered two surpluses—two for two. None for nine and two for two—that's what I'm attempting to remind the shadow Treasurer of. As I've said multiple times already, the governor of the Reserve Bank has said that our surpluses are helping in the fight against inflation. Those surpluses wouldn't be possible without our responsible economic management and cleaning up the mess those opposite left behind.