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

It is a privilege to lead this MPI, because this MPI is about those hardworking Australians who are trying to get ahead. They are the absolute beating heart of our country, of our economy, of driving the prosperity that we all benefit from. But it is also true that those hardworking Australians wanting to get ahead don't want to become the working poor. They need a government that treats fighting inflation as not just its first priority but its second priority and its third priority.

There is no issue more important for this government than fighting inflation. It's important to start with the facts on this issue, as we always should. The reality of the situation we're facing in this country right now is that inflation is stubbornly persistent, and we are facing amongst the highest level of core inflation in the advanced world. We love to be world-beaters in this country, but this is not one where we want to be a world leader. And yet, we are facing amongst the highest inflation in the advanced world. Meanwhile, at the same time we have rampant inflation, the economy is shuddering to a halt. In fact, in the last quarter, the economy only grew at 0.2 per cent, barely above zero. It has essentially stopped. But it gets worse when you look at the economy from the point of view of Australians, because the growth in GDP per capita is not growth—it's shrinking; it's going backwards. Right now, we have negative GDP per capita in this country and part of what is driving that is, in fact, essential to that, and that is labour productivity that is in absolute freefall.

It is shocking to know that, since this Labor government came to power, labour productivity in this country has fallen in a single year by 4.6 per cent—in one year! Productivity is absolutely key to prosperity. If you want higher real wages, you need to have strong labour productivity. In fact, it's -4.6 per cent, in a single year. The bad news about this is that this is the worst we have ever seen of labour productivity since the data began back in 1978. We've never seen anything like it. But that's because we've never seen a government like this since before 1978. Gough Whitlam was a strong rival, I would say, of a similar mindset. But -4.6 per cent is an absolute collapse in labour productivity. That means that for a business trying to produce something, it needs 4.6 per cent more labour than it did a year ago. And those opposite are pushing through toxic industrial relations legislation that will make the situation worse. Meanwhile, the government is proposing rapid population growth without a plan—and this is the key—for the housing services and infrastructure to make population growth achievable, manageable and positive for this great nation.

All of that leading to a situation where real wages are going backwards. We've seen the minister stand up—he did it again today—and crow about wages. Well, here are the facts. The WPI, the wage price index, went up by 3.6 per cent in the last 12 months. But we learnt yesterday that the inflation faced by hardworking Australian families who are trying to get ahead was 9.6 per cent in the last 12 months. That's for working Australians—9.6 per cent. Do you know what that means? Real wages are going back by six per cent in a single year. We will go back and look at the record books, but I reckon we're going to find it pretty hard to find any time that could rival that atrocious outcome. That is why Australians feel like they are going backwards—because they are.

Meanwhile, under this government we have seen 11 interest rate increases and a 4.1 per cent cash rate. Of course, month by month more and more Australians are falling over that mortgage cliff—150,000 this quarter hit by a $95 billion mortgage cliff. Since Labor was elected, a typical family is paying over $1,800 more a month on their mortgage. That's after-tax income. I don't know where they're finding it. They're working harder; there is no doubt about that. They're taking on second jobs. They're giving up all sorts of things, including for their families and their kids. They're making the sacrifices they have to make because the government is overseeing an economy that is going backwards at a rate we haven't seen for a long, long time.

The fact of what this is leading to is really stark—incredibly stark. The NAB has shown that two-thirds of Australians under the age of 50 say that the cost of living is their greatest source of stress. DFA reveals over 43 per cent of households in Queensland, the Treasurer's home state, are facing mortgage stress. That's almost half. We are getting to the point where it's almost half. Roy Morgan Research says that in the three months to June 2023, 1.4 million Australians were at risk of mortgage stress. We hear Lifeline telling us terribly stark realities about what is going on on the ground, with over 80 per cent of the calls now coming into Lifeline because of cost-of-living pressures. This is the human toll. Ben Phillips at the ANU has said that the last 12 months is perhaps the toughest in living memory. We see time and time again the pain being felt on the ground. Good local members like those behind me are all seeing it in their own electorates, and it's certainly what I see in my electorate.

You would have thought that under all those circumstances the government would be doing everything it can to tackle inflation. Meanwhile, we learn in Senate estimates that the lead economic adviser to this government, Dr Stephen Kennedy, has said that after more than a year in office the Prime Minister has not requested a single personal briefing from him on inflation or any other economic issue. Not a single briefing. He is too busy doing all these other things. He is not interested in the cost of living. Meanwhile, the Treasurer, instead of focusing on what really matters to Australians, is ignoring what matters. Just last week we saw him put out his signature document, a public document talking about a wellbeing budget. But when it came to mortgage stress, the latest data he could stomach in the report was from 2020. This report, like this Treasurer, is out of touch and out of date.

They are ignoring what matters. They are completely out of touch with the issues that Australians are facing. We have, in fact, a Treasurer of this great nation who is not a doctor of economics but a doctor of spin. He is more interested in writing a history of his great hero, Paul Keating, than he is on focusing on the hard issues that Australians are facing. He spent last summer not working out how to fight inflation but writing a long diatribe. If any of you get the chance to read it, I assure you: it's a bad idea—don't bother—because it's about remaking capitalism. Those hardworking Australians who are trying to get ahead are not interested in a treasurer that remakes capitalism. They're interested in a treasurer that gets inflation down, gets interest rates down, helps them to make ends meet and makes sure that they've got rising real wages because that's what matters to them.

There are many things that government can do to fight inflation. The first is: don't leave it to the Reserve Bank. The second is: commit. Their fiscal strategy in the last budget dropped budget balance as an objective—completely gone. That hasn't happened since the Charter of Budget Honesty came into place. The reality of this situation is that we have a government that is not interested in fighting inflation. It's far more interested in its Canberra Voice. It's far more interested in its symbolic focus than it is in the real issues that are facing those hardworking Australians who want to get ahead. The reality they are all facing is that they are on the way to becoming the working poor under this government.

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