Surplus surprise
Considerably more Australians want the government to use the surplus to pay down debt than on cost-of-living relief, according to polling seen by Capital Brief.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers clearly wants more of the public to know about his two consecutive surpluses.
“We have been turning those big Liberal deficits into big Labor surpluses,” he said this week at a press conference in Cairns. This is a line he’s had memorised for public appearances since at least the start of June.
One of the reasons Chalmers says the government is running these surpluses is to help with the fight against inflation.
Polling by research firm JWS Research, seen by Capital Brief, suggests why the treasurer might be so eager to keep reminding voters of his budgeting prowess.
