Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We all come in here with talking points, slogans and lines, and we hear them in the speeches. We just heard a few there, including 'a wasted decade' and 'a trillion dollars of debt'.

An honourable member: 'Liberal debt'.

Well, 'Liberal debt'. When we come here and repeat slogans like that we're not actually acknowledging what's happening in this country and we're not actually acknowledging the suffering that people are experiencing. Interest rates have risen nine consecutive times on this government's watch. I'm not going to pretend that that's all the Labor government's fault, but you are responsible for what we do from here and people are looking to you to be responsible for what we do from here.

The latest increase has a consequence for real people who are trying to live normal lives. In the seat of Menzies I'm as close as a federal Liberal gets to the centre of Melbourne. It's still a fair distance; it's off on the horizon. The closer you get to the centre of the city—and the member for Sturt is here too—the more land prices increase, so the more people have to pay to get a little bit of turf that is Australia and so they pay more for their mortgages. A typical mortgage of $750,000 doesn't get you much as you get close to the centre of Melbourne and it doesn't get you much as you get close to the centre of Adelaide, but let's take that amount—$750,000. A person or a family has to find an extra $1,700 per month, or an extra $20,000 a year. That's after-tax money. So whether you're in a single- or dual-income family, you can't walk in to your employer and say: 'Guess what? I have this bill that's your problem, not my problem, so I want you to pay me now. For me to have $20,000, I want you to give an equivalent before-tax rise,' which could be $35,000. It's just not going to happen.

We heard the member for Bennelong talk about a wage increase. Wage increases mean nothing unless they are real wage increases, so a wage increase adjusted for inflation. Each time there's inflation and an increase in interest rates, that is taken away from people's wages. If as a government you are making decisions that are increasing inflation and thereby forcing the hand of the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates, you are taking away from the spending power of families.

We heard a lot of invective from the government about the importance of the executive being accountable to the parliament, and there's no more important way than question time. Questions have been put directly to the Prime Minister. I myself have put four questions to him. It's the only time I've got to speak to the Prime Minister across that dispatch box. Some of the questions included: 'Can the Prime Minister name a single suburb in Australia where power prices have been reduced?' and 'Can the Prime Minister identify a single Australian who is paying less on their electricity bill now than they were 10 months ago?' I can name one person: the Prime Minister. I'm sure the Prime Minister had an electricity bill more than 10 months ago, but I don't think the electricity bill for the Lodge or Kirribilli lands on his personal desk. But, again, there were no answers.

As a first-term member, I am getting familiar with the standing orders. Standing orders say that an answer must be directly relevant to the question—not just relevant but directly relevant. But we don't get a directly relevant answer or an answer that is in any way relevant. It's not just because the opposition is owed an answer; it's because Australians are owed an answer. If you care about the circumstances of Australian families and Australian individuals, you will take those questions seriously and answer them seriously. They are questions like: 'What was the interest rate 10 months ago compared to today?' That should be a relatively straightforward question to answer. A directly relevant answer shouldn't be hard, but it was too hard. We asked the Prime Minister if he could identify a single mortgage holder who has seen their interest rate go down in the past 10 months or a single person whose grocery bill is lower than it was 10 months ago. The Prime Minister might say: 'I don't have anyone, but I'm going to go and find out. I'm going to go and speak to Australians and actually show that I care and that I'm listening, because I am responsible and the government is responsible.'

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