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

Before I begin, can I congratulate those opposite, and the new member for Aston, Mary Doyle, on getting elected. That is a significant achievement for her, her campaign team and the Labor Party. But, all of that said, I have been in this parliament for not even a year, but I have been an observer of politics long enough to remember when commentators were talking about wall-to-wall Liberal governments and what that meant. I remember how fleeting that can be, because to be in power, at a state or a federal level, is the gift of the Australian people, and you have to earn that, not only on the day of the election but also on every day after.

There is no doubt, for those who will compare notes on the Aston by-election, cost of living was one of top issues. There will be an analysis of what happened—my party will do one and your party will do one, I'm sure—but it's clear that the people of Melbourne and, probably, the people of Australia, are giving you a chance. They're giving you a chance to solve their problems. When they give you a chance, for them, it's really giving you a second chance, because when you look at the promises that were made before the last election, those promises have been broken. You've heard those promises many times over: the several references to $275; the claims of real, lasting plans for cheaper electricity and cheaper mortgages and that Australia would be better off under a Labor government.

So you're being given a second chance, and, when you're given a second chance, I say, 'Don't waste it,' because I don't think Australians will give you a third chance. This is it—this is your second chance.

Tonight the Treasurer has one job and it's to reduce inflation. The reason that that's his most important job is that, at the moment, all that work is being done by the Reserve Bank of Australia—all of it. We can have a tit-for-tat about who is to blame: the previous government, or the last 12 months? And the truth is: it's a bit of both. It has to be a bit of both—it would be unreasonable to say otherwise. But what you do is on you, and what you do can't be to leave it all to the Reserve Bank.

There has to be a role for fiscal policy, because, when we think back to the latest, or the last, increase by the RBA, that was devastating for Australian families because it caught them off guard. They weren't expecting it. The professionals weren't expecting it. We saw it in how the market reacted. We saw it in how all of the commentators and all of the media, who are professionals at this, didn't expect it. One of the reasons it happened was that the RBA was addressing something that the government should have been assisting with, and that is core inflation. You can brag about where Australia ranks in inflation around the world, but core inflation—which excludes some of the variable items, of food and resources, which go up and down on a more variable rate—is the inflation that is 'sticky', that lasts longer and that affects people more. When the RBA saw core inflation being higher here than in any G7 country, then what you were doing, as to fiscal policy, wasn't working, and the RBA had to do it.

You may call it a cliche to say it's having one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake, but it is the most simple metaphor for what's happening. We need fiscal policy. We need the government to be working in tandem with our monetary policy, not counter to it.

Today in question time we saw a lot of hubris. We saw a lot of chanting. The responses of 'Why?' were repeated with great enthusiasm today. And we heard the same cliches again, of having inherited a trillion dollars of debt—said to be 'Liberal debt', even though half of that was inherited from the previous Labor government. And let's just forget that we had a pandemic! Let's forget about that, and let's forget that there were actual responses to that, which included your support of the pandemic debt. That's just conveniently forgotten. So, yes, debt is a massive problem. And guess what? There is a bipartisan element to that debt. But it is dishonest to ignore the pandemic and the important decisions that were made by the previous government and your support of those. In fact, you didn't just support them; you asked for them to be extended. Debt would be even higher if you actually had been sitting over there during the pandemic.

So you have been given a second chance. I say: the Treasurer, tonight, shouldn't waste it, because you won't get a third.

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