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

I thank the speakers who have come before me. I will single out the two on the other side, and I'm sure that the member for Fraser has to leave. Can I congratulate the member for Fraser for actually sticking to this topic a bit more than the member for Fenner did. The member for Fenner should know better. He had 10 minutes—twice your time—and I think you had twice the substance on this topic that he did. He gave us a full dissertation on his love of Monty Python, another sort of entertainment. That's a bit disappointing, because the member for Fraser and the member for Fenner are accomplished academics and have accomplished postgraduate qualifications in economics. In fact, many might argue that perhaps they, rather than those who have written political PhDs, should be in some of the key economic positions.

We have noticed that on the other side there is selective hearing when it comes to experts. There is a tendency to want to listen to experts who only say what they think they want to hear. After the budget, we heard from three experts about how this budget would contribute to inflation—and it is putting more pressure on the RBA to do the heavy lifting. Chris Richardson said he thought that 'the Reserve Bank was done and dusted, but this has notably raised the chance that they will do another swing of the baseball bat'. And then S&P Global Ratings disputed the government's forecasts, saying that the 'handouts in today's budget may add to inflationary pressures.' Thirdly and finally, the Chief Economist of BetaShares, David Bassanese, called the budget 'unambiguously expansionary'. When we look at this budget being an inflationary budget, that actually hurts Australians.

The member for Fraser talked about the minimum wage. It's a shame he didn't talk about something else, which is real wages. It's real wages that count. They account for inflation and they look at what is important to people, which is purchasing power. It doesn't help you if your wages go up but expenses are rising faster. That's why real wages matter. The member for Fraser knows better and is more than qualified to actually address that, and so is the member for Fenner and anyone on the other side. We should all be talking about real wages because there are two sides to the cost-of-living crisis: what you earn and what you have to spend. We can't just pick the one that's more politically convenient. We have to talk about both.

There are some records that Australia has that we shouldn't be proud of, one being the record of core inflation. This is addressing the things that actually matter, rather than just the headline that suits particular talking points. At 6.6 per cent, Australia's core inflation is higher than the UK, the US, Canada and the euro area. We know where inflation is coming from. It's coming from Canberra.

We give you the benefit of the doubt as a new government. You are just over one year in, and there's still a tendency to want to look in the rear-view mirror and blame the previous government. I'm a Victorian, and it reminds me of a quote given by then opposition leader Daniel Andrews in 2012. He referred to the then Premier with this:

That is where we have got to in this state. What do we get from the Premier? We get excuses and blame. He is always trying to blame someone else. Nothing is this man's fault, and he is accountable for nothing.

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The Premier is very certain in his blaming and his buck-passing.

In 2012 the city of Melbourne, where I'm from, the capital of Victoria, was the most livable city on earth. It held that title from 2011 to 2017. Melbourne is now ranked 10th. That's nothing to be proud of. That happened on a Labor government's watch. There are two other rankings that the state of Victoria is top of, and we shouldn't be proud of them. One is that Victoria has the largest debt in this nation. It's so large that it is larger than the combined debts of New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania. Victoria is paying the highest taxes in Australia. So, instead of leading the livability index, Victoria is leading the debt index. It's leading the tax index. We saw, with the recent state budget, measures and policies that will drive business out of Victoria and drive hard-working families to the wall.

You may ask why I'm talking about the Victorian state government. I'm talking about the Victorian state government because I'm aware that sitting over there are an enormous amount of Victorian Labor members. If we want to look at what the next few years might look like—not just the last 12 months, but the next few years, when it's not so disciplined; where more extreme elements within their party say, 'Now it's time to actually dust off the policies we really want to do'—look no further than Victoria, because that is an insight into where we may go in the next few years.

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