Q: Just back on the economy – from the briefings you’ve received, can you explicitly rule out a recession?

Albanese:

Look, we have – as a government – continued to see the economy grow. We’ve continued to see now, over the last five quarters, wages grow five quarters in a row. We have, in addition to that, seen tax cuts for every taxpayer dealing with cost-of-living relief. And we’ve seen inflation, importantly, brought down to 2.4%.

It had a “6” in front of it before we were elected. It peaked at 7.8% in 2022. And what happened in 2022? In the lead-up to that election was a March budget which saw a massive spike in the deficit – up to $78 billion.

Not a single dollar of savings in that budget. When we came to office, we had to repair that. And we turned that around.

At a time where we’ve had the largest global inflation issue to deal with since the 1980s and the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s. Higher wages, lower inflation, lower taxes, increased cost-of-living support, economic growth – and, by the way, more than a million jobs created on our watch.

That hard work that we have done, if we had not have done that, we would not have been as prepared for what is happening in the global economy. We’ll continue – we’ll continue to engage. But I’ll tell you what – it’s not the time for cuts in order to pay for a $600 billion nuclear plan.