Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Prospect keeps referring back to the previous government. I wonder whether he forgets that he is actually in government now and this is what the Australian people are looking for—for him to provide some leadership and head them in a direction to regain consumer confidence.

On 11 June, the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment Survey results were released. It showed that the level of the index fell by 5.6 per cent in May from a figure of 89.9 down to a figure of 84.7 in June. This is the lowest level this index has been since December 1992, coincidentally when Labor were last in office. This is also the fifth straight month it has come in at below 100, which, also coincidentally, is a time frame falling within the Rudd government’s current term in office. This index is an indicator that the government should be taking notice of. It is an indicator of their economic performance and an indicator of the Australian public’s confidence in what they are doing. In this House yesterday I heard the member for Wakefield repeatedly trying to bring the Newspoll results to the attention of the opposition leader. Maybe the member for Wakefield should be more concerned about recognised economic indicators than about a poll that changes on a daily basis. This index has been kept since September 1974 and is recognised throughout Australia in the business sector, and companies make decisions affecting their directions based on this index.

In this House yesterday I saw some amazing events, and one of them was when the Prime Minister left the chamber during question time to check his Oxford or Macquarie dictionary. He came back to the chamber and, in his most charming schoolmasterly manner, he proceeded to tell us the meaning of the words ‘pattern’, ‘behaviour’ and ‘unacceptable’. It is good to see he likes to get his facts correct and, as he was kind enough to enlighten the members of the opposition with the meanings of his words in Japan, I would like to take the opportunity to enlighten the government members on a few words and their meanings. The first word is ‘consumer’ and a definition of that is: ‘a person or organisation that uses a commodity or service’. I guess the Treasurer would know all about consumers as he gives them advice in his newsletter on how to save money with the so-called ‘Pricewatch: Top 10 tips’ segment.

The ripper in all that was the No. 7 tip, which tells the consumer to ‘ask for products not on the shelf’. Doesn’t that just inspire us with some consumer confidence: the federal Treasurer giving tips on shopping and then telling consumers to try and buy things that are not there? This brings me to the next word I would define for the government members and that is ‘confidence’. The dictionary states: ‘trust or faith in a person or thing’. The latest index figures show that this government, only six months after the election, has lost the confidence of the electorate. So when did the consumers of Australia start to lose this confidence? It was not six months after the election but only two months. In October 2007, the index was 115.3. By January 2008, it had dropped to 103.1 and then dipped below 100 in February for the first time in over 12 months.

During the election campaign Mr Rudd and Mr Swan told everyone they were economic conservatives and that the expectations of the electorate and consumers of Australia were that grocery prices were going to go down, fuel prices were going to go down, housing affordability was going to be fixed and the cost of child care would be reduced. The 2008-09 federal budget has done nothing to address these platforms upon which the Rudd government keeps saying that they were elected. Instead, six months into his term as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd capitulated and announced on 22 May 2008 that he has done all he can do to address the problems he promised to fix and that, under federal Labor, prices will continue to rise. Mr. Rudd said:

We have done as much as we physically can to provide additional help to the family budget, recognising that the cost of everything is still going through the roof: cost of food, cost of petrol, cost of rents, cost of childcare.

It is little wonder the consumer confidence index has plummeted. In my time as a football coach, I spent many years convincing teams and the team players of their abilities and providing them with a confident outlook on their game plans, skills and futures, both as players and in their lives. Never in my time as a coach did I talk down their abilities or give them negative thoughts. You may well ask why I never spoke negatively. The answer is easy: you will get the result that you set through the tone of your dialogue. If you talk positively, that is what you will get. If you talk negatively, that is the mindset that is adopted by the players and that is what you will get: a negative result. This government from day one has adopted this negative mindset. In particular, the Treasurer went about talking down the economy, talking about an inflation genie, talking about infrastructure bottlenecks and talking about interest rate rises; it was like the sky was falling in. And just on interest rate rises, it appears as though John Howard was correct when he stated:

... interest rates would always be lower under a coalition government.

There is nothing I or the Australian public have seen to indicate anything else.

The Rudd government was so intent on creating a doom-and-gloom mindset in the electorate, just so it could point the finger at the previous government, that it inadvertently created a downward spiral effect on consumer confidence that it could never have foreseen. The Treasurer never saw the effect of his talking down the economy and the consequences he would create by blindly pursuing cheap political gain. This collapse of consumer confidence lies squarely at the feet of our Treasurer and the government. As the Treasurer and as a leader he needs to create an environment of positive attitude for the consumers of Australia, both domestically and commercially, to turn this collapse of confidence around.

The Rudd government released its first budget on 13 May this year and squandered an enormous opportunity. It was an opportunity for the Rudd government and federal Labor to finally prove they were the economic conservatives they claimed to be in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election. Instead, the Rudd government delivered a stereotypical Labor budget that was high-taxing and high-spending, yet tried to win a few brownie points by playing on the politics of class envy. It is now undeniable that, under the Rudd government, the cost of living has risen and is continuing to rise, and with this the consumer confidence of ordinary Australians has plummeted to levels our nation has not seen in more than a decade.

There have been numerous opportunities to lift consumer confidence over the past months but it just has not happened. Why not? First of all the budget inspired no consumer confidence. Then our Prime Minister heads to Japan and announces a hastily put together deal with Toyota. It was so hasty that Toyota had no idea about the funding they were going to receive. The Prime Minister gives away $35 million of federal taxpayers’ money (a) to a company that did not need the money to do the deal and does not know what to do with the money and (b) to import old technology while the rest of the world will be getting the newer version of the imported motor. That sort of deal will create no consumer confidence, and most of the people in business who I have discussed this with thought it was a joke. To quote one of them: ‘Well, this is what happens when you put a bureaucrat in charge of a trillion dollar economy. Where do I line up to do a deal with the Prime Minister?’ Until the government understand that they are dealing with an educated electorate, it does not matter how much spin they put on even poor commercial deals, the Australian public will see through that spin and we will continue to see the collapse of consumer confidence in this government.

In May this year, the Prime Minister visited Western Australia and had a photo opportunity with a local kids’ football team. The local community newspaper, the Southern Gazette, reported that the Prime Minister’s visit ‘brought with it reassurance for local families struggling with the housing affordability crisis’. Just like prior to the election, in the article the Prime Minister uses carefully managed words to give the impression that his government is doing something to fix the housing affordability problem in Western Australia. Yet, if you read the article carefully, nowhere is there mention of what the Prime Minister and his Labor team actually plan to do to fix the problem.

We have a Prime Minister who continually tries to fool the Australian people and whose every word has to be carefully read and re-read to see where the deception lies. In the article the Prime Minister says, ‘During this period of great economic growth in WA it’s important that families are not left behind in the rush but are given support, such as through the provision of affordable housing.’ He went on to say, ‘The federal government, in partnership with government at all levels, wants to help keep the cost of community infrastructure down and as a flow-on effect also keep down the cost to homebuyers.’

It is all well and good for the Prime Minister to recognise that there are major challenges facing community infrastructure and to want to keep the costs down to make housing more affordable. However, what the people of Australia are looking for from this government is not recognition that there is a problem with high costs of living but rather an actual plan to be formulated and put into action. There is nothing in what this government is doing to inspire confidence in the domestic or commercial sectors. I for one fail to see how the Prime Minister tossing a football around with a local high school team, as he did for the community news article in my electorate, and pretending to empathise with people suffering under the crisis, is in any way helping to actually redress the housing affordability crisis affecting Western Australians and constituents in my electorate of Swan.

In summary, the government have contributed to the collapse of consumer confidence by talking up doom and gloom. This collapse in confidence can only be blamed on the Rudd government. When elected to office the Rudd Labor government gave the impression that they had a plan for easing the cost-of-living pressures for working Australians. We were led to believe that grocery prices, inflation, fuel costs and housing prices would all fall under Labor. We are not even a year into the Rudd government’s first term in office and already the Australian people have lost confidence in this government’s ability to run the national economy. The reports are out. Consumer confidence has fallen to levels this nation has not seen since December 1992, and for the fifth straight month the figures have come in below 100. The Australian people’s lack of confidence in the Rudd government’s ability to run our economy and live up to their election promises is fostering a national economy where consumers have lost confidence, and, in turn, so have our businesses. The Australian public expects and should get more.

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