The Treasurer has doubled down on comments he made in a speech on Monday about opposition leader Peter Dutton being “divisive”.

“Our focus is on cost of living and the fight against inflation, and Peter Dutton’s focus is on dividing people, and that’s because that’s all he knows and it’s all he does,” Chalmers said in his interview on Sky News.

“And in my view, Peter Dutton’s divisiveness is his defining and disqualifying characteristic...he’s too divisive to be the prime minister of this country. It’s that simple, and I don’t regret for one second pointing that out to people.”

Chalmers said the main focus of his speech on Monday was not to criticise Dutton, but that it was important to call out his counterpart’s strategy.

“[Dutton] picks needless and unnecessary fights on national security in the hope that nobody notices,” he said.

“We’re in the third year of a three-year parliamentary term. He still has no cost of policies. He still has no economic credibility, and he hopes, by being more and more divisive, that that will distract from the fact that he doesn’t have any of that economic policy or economic credibility that people should have in the third year of a three-year parliamentary term.”

Chalmers said he “100 per cent” stood by comments he made on Monday.

“Peter Dutton is the most divisive leader we’ve seen in politics,” he said.

“I think in the modern history of this country, it’s all he knows. It’s all he does, and that should disqualify him from the Prime Ministership.”