Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a difficult day for Australian households in terms of their household budgets, with the Reserve Bank's announcement of a 0.5-point interest rate rise. We can expect that banks will probably pass that on. I think that adds to a broader set of conditions that are challenging household budgets. Fuel, food and energy prices are at an all-time high, and that's largely driven by international circumstances, particularly the war in Ukraine, which has certainly put global supply chains under extraordinary pressure and driven up those costs accordingly. The reality is, we face a time of significant economic challenge in our country generally, thanks to nearly a decade of squandered opportunities, wrong priorities and rorts from the previous Liberal government.

An honourable member: Rorts?

Rorts from the previous Liberal government. These rate rises began before the election. The cruel, harsh reality is that the Reserve Bank have been relatively clear that they expect that there will be more to come. There is no point in pretending that these rate rises don't hurt households; they do. They particularly hurt households in my electorate of Hawke, where many people have bought their first homes or have bought a home that could be there forever home and have leveraged themselves accordingly.

We have inherited a decade of the former coalition's neglect. We have a skills crisis, a cost of living crisis and a trillion dollars of debt that will take generations for us to pay off. Of course, we now understand that as interest rates rise the cost of repaying that debt, the interest repayments on it, are the fastest growing part of the Australian budget. The issue for households is on the expense side of their household budgets, but it's not only on the expense side of household budgets. The income side of household budgets has been wilfully neglected throughout the decade of the former government. 'Neglected' might even be the wrong term, because those opposite have been very clear; they have admitted this. The former finance minister, Mathias Cormann, was clear that deliberate wage suppression was, in fact, a deliberate design feature of their economic management. They purposely suppressed wages growth for working people. They deliberately put our households and our families across the country in financial distress, and left us exposed to these international circumstances once prices started to rise. This deliberate decision to maximise returns for corporate interests at the expense of working Australians has left households very much exposed to the inflationary pressures and the consequent actions that we see the Reserve Bank taking in order to deal with them today.

The decision will make life a lot harder for Australians who are already paying more for energy and groceries. We are focused on tackling these cost of living challenges rather than exacerbating them by suppressing their wages on an ongoing basis. We have a plan to help everyday Australians who are struggling as a result of the wasted decade from the former Liberal government. Our economic plan is about responsible cost of living relief and growing the economy without adding to inflation. Labor will deliver cheaper childcare and cheaper medicines. We will invest in skills and productivity, and cleaner and cheaper energy. We will invest in education. Importantly, we will get wages moving again. We will start to deal with the income side of household budgets and we will ensure that Australian households get a real wages rise.

The coming October budget will be all about responsible cost of living relief, implementing our economic plan and redirecting money wasted by our predecessors to more productive investments. Our nation is paying the price for that wasted decade under the former Liberal government. But Australia has voted for a better future under an Albanese Labor government and that has given us the opportunity to restore prosperity and growth to our country. Australian workers now have a government with an economic plan(time expired)

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