Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher

TOM STEINFORT, HOST: Pauline Hanson has been named preferred Prime Minister in Queensland, unseating Anthony Albanese, according to some new analysis of Newspoll data. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher joins me now for more from Canberra. Katy, good to see you. It really does sound like Labor's on the nose. They've got a lot of work to do in Queensland. How worried are you about this continuing rise of One Nation?

KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Well, we don't really pay much attention to the polls, Tom, but we do know that people are doing it tough. You know, they're under a lot of pressure, cost of living, petrol prices, all of that. And so, our job is to look at what we can do to try and alleviate some of that pressure and provide some assistance without adding to the inflation challenge in our economy. The war in the Middle East couldn't end soon enough, really, because we're seeing that play out not just in our economy, but in economies around the world, where we've also seen, in the last month, interest rates go up.

STEINFORT: Do you honestly expect people to believe you don't look at the polls? It's like a shopkeeper not looking at the profit and loss statement.

GALLAGHER: Well, I guess what I'm saying to you is the job that I do, the work that I do every day, and what the Treasurer does and the PM does, is think about ways we can try and help people with cost-of-living pressures, acknowledging that right now people are really feeling that pressure. And I think some of that would be reflected in how people are feeling, you know, about the world. There's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unrest and, you know, people are feeling it at the grocery store, you know, and at petrol prices. And so our job is not to really concern ourselves with what's happening somewhere else, but to actually focus on what we can do right here, right now. Tax cuts, looking at how we get wages going, investments in bulk billing, cheaper medicines, all of that permanent cost-of-living help to try and help people and households across Australia.

STEINFORT: All right, let's move on now then to the big issue of the last week. And there's fresh criticism today levelled at your government about how it has responded to this OpenAI data hack on the government website. There are critics from the tech industry saying this has been completely blown out of proportion by the government, which is trying to politicise the issue. What do you say to that?

GALLAGHER: Well, that's just not true. I completely reject that. As someone who was the Minister advised of this incident and who has then talked with other, you know, the PM, the Deputy Prime Minister, this was a significant issue. Yes, it was on a public-facing website and the data that the agent accessed was not personal information or some of those data sets that we protect to the highest level. But it is very novel and it is the first time that we are aware that an agent acting on its own, not with the authority of OpenAI, was able to get into one of our data systems. And I think we did the right thing, which was to come out and tell people what we knew and to raise those concerns with OpenAI.

STEINFORT: All right, now on rate rises, we're told that it's pretty much a done deal that the RBA will be hiking rates tomorrow. That means mortgage holders face forking out up to 46% of their income now on repayments. You know, and then we've got fuel prices skyrocketing, and this is all because of inflation that we're seeing the interest rates go up. As Finance Minister, how much responsibility do you take for the fact that we've had bloated government spending that is playing a role in lifting inflation?

GALLAGHER: Well, I just want to push back on that. Like, we have found savings in every single budget since we came to government. We have lowered the debt burden by returning all upward revisions to revenue to pay down debt. We've lowered the –

STEINFORT: But the government is still spending more than ever –

GALLAGHER: Well, we are investing in those services that people really rely on. But in the last budget we've found savings, including in the NDIS, of over $35 billion. So, we are doing our bit. I take responsibility for that, making sure that we're getting the budget in better shape, that we are finding savings where we can. But also, Tom, you know, people expect their hospitals to be funded, their schools to be funded, their aged care system to be funded, NDIS to be funded, the defence area of government funded, all of these areas. The pressure is increasing, not decreasing in that. So, we have to take decisions about how we meet all those pressures and run the budget at the same time. The deficit's coming in lower than what we forecast at budget. And again, that's because we're so focused on making sure we do our bit to help with the inflation challenge.

STEINFORT: All right, Minister, appreciate your time with us this morning.

GALLAGHER: Thank you.