Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Sadly, sitting through question time today, I felt like I was in some kind of altered reality or some kind of parallel universe, because on multiple occasions during question time today we were lectured to by the Prime Minister and told that Australians have never had it better. Hardwood timber workers have never had it better. Australians with a mortgage have never had it better. Grocery shoppers have never had it better. Energy users have never had it better.

I thought I'd get a few facts on this, because we heard from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy as well that we've never had it better. In fact he told us: 'It's all okay when your bill goes up. It's okay because energy prices have gone down.' I'm still trying to work that one out. I don't know whether he thinks energy prices are going up, down or sideways, but I tell you that I know that they're actually going up: in New South Wales, by $594 dollars; in South Australia, by $512; and in South-East Queensland, by $402. They are the facts. This is an energy minister who doesn't like the facts, but they are clear.

As for the Prime Minister's altered reality 'Australians have never had it better', during the election campaign he liked to carry his gold coin around, but the sad reality is that coin is worth substantially less than it was a year ago. It's a grab bag of silver coins now, and, in a year's time, it'll be fewer silver coins, because this government has given up the ghost in fighting inflation.

The sad reality—and we should deal with realities here, not the fictions from those opposite—is that for a typical Australian family with a mortgage they are paying out extra costs in their household budget of over $25,000 a year compared with a year ago. That's higher energy bills, despite what the energy minister tries to claim in his parallel universe; that's extra mortgage costs and that's extra grocery costs. As for the things Australians love, Vegemite is up eight per cent—not in a year, in a month. They think it's funny. Australians don't think it's funny. Peanut butter soared nine per cent in a month. Yogurt was up 12 per cent in a month. Australians are trying to balance their budgets, and those opposite think it's funny. That's where it's come to.

In those rare moments when they admit there's an issue with inflation—rare moments indeed—they go looking for someone to blame. They start with Vladimir Putin. He's always their favourite. They love to go after Vladimir Putin. They love to go after floods or bushfires. They love to go after the gremlin down the bottom of the garden. But the one thing they won't admit is it's the responsibility of a good government to fight inflation. But, when you've got a spin doctor as a Treasurer, rather than a real doctor of economics—there's one over there, the member for Parramatta; he's a real doctor for economics and not a spin doctor, but we've got a spin doctor as a Treasurer, whose PhD was on Paul Keating. It was long and very thick, and there were a few numbers in there—the page numbers and the Newspoll numbers! There wasn't much economics other than that. So this is what we get: we get a government that has given up the ghost.

When we look at what economists say about this budget that we've just seen, this is what they say. BetaShares Chief Economist, David Bassanese, says, 'The budget is unambiguously expansionary.' That means pressure on inflation. S&P Global Ratings disputed the government's forecasts saying: 'We expect inflation to be stubbornly higher than the Reserve Bank's target until fiscal 2026. Handouts in today's budget add to inflationary pressures.' Richard Holden said: 'There is no question that energy subsidies or cuts in fuel excise are inflationary. It's not a matter of opinion. It's just an economic fact.' Cherelle Murphy said, 'The cost will be potentially higher interest rates, which households and businesses cannot afford. Bill Evans—who the Treasurer has been keen on quoting, but I think he's less keen now than he was—said, 'By our measure, this is an expansionary budget compared with the 10 budgets proceeding the COVID period.'

We do have coming up, in the next week or so, a Reserve Bank decision. There'll be more in the future. Whatever they choose to do in that decision, the sad reality of an expansionary budget is that interest rates will stay stronger for longer and all Australians will pay a price for that.

The Prime Minister has shown no interest in this. In fact, he mocks the issue. He thinks it's hilarious, and we heard today from the Treasury Secretary, Steven Kennedy, that the Prime Minister has not even sought any personal briefing from the government's top economic adviser on inflation. If this was this government's No. 1 issue—we know it's Australians' No. 1 issue—you'd reckon he'd asked the top adviser what to do about it. But this is not a prime minister that's interested in solving the problem; this is a prime minister that is all smear and no idea, and we've seen that in this budget.

What we know about this budget, apart from the fact it will be inflationary, is it is a big spending budget. It's a big-spending budget that has added, since those opposite got into government, $185 billion of extra spending. We've opposed $45 billion of spending just in recent months, with $18 billion of interest costs attached to it, because those things are inflationary.

The other thing we know about this budget it that it's a budget for an unmanaged big Australia. On this side of the place, we are huge supporters of Australia's successful historical immigration program. I grew up in Cooma, one of the great immigrant towns of Australia—flags all around the park for all the nations that came and worked in that region after the Second World War. But an immigration program that doesn't have the infrastructure, that doesn't have the housing and that doesn't have the services that are required to make living in a community great is an immigration program that will fail.

Today we got the latest building approval numbers from the ABS. I notice the Minister for Housing was not interested in talking about these numbers, and I wouldn't have been if I were her either, because we saw in those numbers that, in the last month alone—the last data period—total dwelling approvals have dropped by 8.1 per cent. Over the course of the last year, approvals have dropped by 24.1 per cent. If you go into the detail, you see private sector housing is down by 18.6 over the year and other dwellings, which includes units, of course, are down 35.4 per cent. And their answer to this is a Ponzi scheme. They're going to borrow a whole lot of money and gamble it. We're told it's going to be in equity, so I don't think it's going to be on the horses. Who knows? But they're going to gamble it on equities, hope like hell it makes some money and then hope like hell that they can build a couple of houses. But I tell you what: it won't be the houses required for an immigration program of 1.5 million over the next five years.

If you want to talk about overall population growth, the expectation is that, in the next two years alone, we're going to see 900,000 additional Australians, and housing approvals are collapsing. I don't know where the government thinks they're going to live or how it thinks they're going to be transported when you've got a budget that is falling in infrastructure over the course of the forwards and since we were in government.

We are seeing from those opposite a big-spending, big-taxing, big-government, big-Australia budget that will not serve the needs of Australia. It is adding taxes on income, on farmers, on truckies, on franking credits and on superannuation. We are opposing those things. We're proudly opposing those things. They are our policies because that is the right policy for Australia. Those opposite are delivering the wrong policies for an Australia facing an inflation crisis that needs to be addressed.

See this speech in context