Anthony Albanese has flagged that an incoming Labor government will try to rein in rampant inflation with a review of government expenditure by the end of the year.
Facing the ABC’s Q+A program on Thursday night, Mr Albanese said the government would put downward pressure on inflation by increasing productivity and remaining measured in its spending.
When asked on Friday what Labor would do in the short to medium term with big policy items such as child care, affordable housing and women’s economic participation taking time to implement, the Labor leader said a review into wasteful government spending would be implemented by the end of the year.
“We have a plan to make sure that all of our expenditures or big commitments that we’re making are ones that will grow the economy,” he said.
“We’ve prioritised those investments but in terms of expenditure, and putting downward pressure on that, we’ll have a review of government expenditure by treasury and finance.
“We’ll go through it line by line where we can make a difference … and we’ll do that before the end of the year,” Mr Albanese said.
Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles says a range of factors impact interest and inflation rates, but that easing the cost of living would form the centrepiece of the opposition’s economic agenda.
“Australians are experiencing a cost of living crisis. What underpins the cost of living crisis is the fact that real wages are going backwards,” he said.
“We’ve made clear that we’ll give rise to affordable childcare very quickly. To ease the cost of living straightaway, what we’ll do is put in place policies which will see an easing in the pressure of power prices.”
An agitated Mr Albanese also attacked the media for playing “word games” when repeatedly asked about his policy pledges and dodging questions about concrete commitments.
Repeatedly asked whether Labor would guarantee no cuts to healthcare, NDIS or education, Mr Albanese was steadfast that “Labor will always be better on health, education and the NDIS”.
But when asked to clarify whether this meant no cuts to the services, he lashed out at journalists’ “gotcha questions”.
“You cannot have a clearer answer than that. Labor is putting additional funding into health, education and the NDIS and we stand by it,” he said.
“You know what puts people off politics? That sort of word game. That is very clear. It can’t be clearer. We stand by our additional funding. That’s not a cut.”
Mr Albanese and some of his supporters in his electorate of Grayndler in Sydney’s inner west also hit out at journalists asking whether he would front up over his NDIS gaffe on Thursday when he was stumped on the policy’s detail.
One lady told the journalist asking whether Mr Albanese would stick by his pledge to own up to his mistakes to “shut up” and “move on to something more important”.
The Labor leader said the NDIS wasn’t about “gotcha questions” as he doubled down that he knew his own policy despite needing to be handed his brief by an adviser mid-news conference.
Mr Marles backed up his leader, saying electing the prime minister wasn’t a pop quiz.
“We’re not electing a candidate for Sale of the Century,” he told reporters in Sydney.
“This has to be a contest of ideas. There are 30-odd policies on our website with many, many pages. I can’t recite all of them, but what I know is at the heart of those is an agenda which is being led by Anthony Albanese.”
Labor also dumped its promise to include superannuation on government-funded parental leave, which is mostly accessed by women, due to budget pressures.
The policy was taken to the 2019 election and was still being touted as policy as recently as 2021.
