Mid-year budget update details upcoming deficits after two surpluses

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has defended his handling of the federal budget.    Mr Chalmers says Labor has struck the right balance, with their overall economic strategy.

Transcript

00:00We've maintained a primary focus on inflation and the cost of living without ignoring our

00:08brought up responsibilities to people when it comes to Medicare and medicines and pensions

00:14and the like and also without ignoring the very substantial risks to growth.

00:20We need to remember in the international context that most of the OECD has had a negative quarter

00:25of growth. We have escaped a negative quarter of growth to date. Our gross debt position

00:31is a fraction of what we see in comparable countries and our budget improvement since

00:372021 has been much faster than the average of advanced economies and the specific comparison

00:45with the economies that we usually refer to.

00:49And so we have made a lot of progress and you can see that progress in the document

00:53today, even with a little bit of slippage in some of the years, a $200 billion turnaround

00:59since we were elected is the biggest nominal consolidation in the budget on record.

01:05And we've managed to get the deficit for this year a little bit smaller as well, but much

01:10smaller than was anticipated a couple of years ago.

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