Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has dismissed claims Labor is not focused on bringing down inflation through lowering spending, as the Reserve Bank is set to meet today to decide whether to raise, lower or hold interest rates steady.
Appearing on Nine’s Today, Gallagher was asked: “Leading economists are now accusing you of spending too much time fiddling with taxes rather than reducing government spending. How do you respond to that accusation?”
Gallagher said: “Well, I don’t accept that at all. I mean, in every budget, we have reduced, we have found savings either to return to budget so that we have lower debt, or to you know reallocate across the budget”.
The minister said the budget was under “enormous pressure” because of the cost of social services and defence, saying the government found “more savings than we spent” in the last budget.
“We really do make a huge effort to look at where we can trim spending. But we also need to be honest, and accept that there is a lot of pressure on the Commonwealth budget to do more and to provide more support to people, and we have to try to find the right balance with that,” Gallagher said.
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