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

I am absolutely delighted to be speaking on this MPI and delighted that my colleagues supported me on this. I'm disappointed that Labor didn't stand up and support me on this one as they did last week, but the truth is they know that real wages are collapsing under this government, and they don't want to hear us talk about that. We heard them talking a moment ago about disinformation. I tell you what: the disinformation we are getting from the other side on wages is absolutely extraordinary, because, under Labor, real wages are going backwards. Australians are feeling poorer, and that's because they are poorer.

Someone might want to let the Treasurer know. I know he ran for the door. He doesn't want to hear the reality that real wages are going down. We saw yesterday in this chamber and in the press gallery and in the other place the spectacle of the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations spinning a laughable claim that Australians are better off than a year ago. Well, Australians don't feel that way. Is the Treasurer serious? The truth of the matter is that real wages are going down in this country, and the Treasurer on the other side does not want to admit it.

The truth of the matter is that real wages are a function of your wage and what you have to pay for the goods you buy with that wage. You don't get a wage for nothing. You get a wage so that you can buy the goods and services you need for yourself, for your family, for the future. If the reality is that prices are going up faster than wages, Australians are worse off. Let's actually look at the numbers. Prices for a working family in the last 12 months have gone up by 9.6 per cent. Wages have only gone up by about one-third of that. In fact, let's do the simple maths. This doctor of spin on the other side—he's not a doctor of economics. We've got a doctor of economics in the chamber on the other side, and there's another one who sits back there, but no doctor of economics at the dispatch box. He's a doctor of spin. He hasn't worked out that when you subtract 9.6 from 3.6 you get minus six. That's how much worse off a typical Australian working family is compared to a year ago. They can buy less with the money they earn than they could a year ago, by six per cent.

This isn't the first time the Treasurer has been tricky. We've got a tricky Treasurer. He was a tricky Treasurer when he put out his welfare budget, where he ignored 11 interest rate increases when he was looking at mortgage stress. He wanted to tell Australians they weren't under any mortgage stress, so he used numbers from before the 11 interest rate increases. Talk about an out-of-date and out-of-touch Treasurer, a tricky Treasurer, a walking talking point who is not interested in fighting inflation. He is focused on reinventing capitalism. He's focused on wasting money, raising taxes and reshaping the Productivity Commission so it doesn't focus on productivity. He's focused on his big-taxing, big-government, big-union agenda.

The truth of what is going on in the economy right now is, as I said, real wages are going down by six per cent. There are a couple of parts to that. The economy is shuddering to a halt. We saw in the national accounts just last week that the growth per person in Australia has been negative for two quarters in a row. That's a per capita recession. And the truth is growth is felt by people. When growth per person is going backwards, Australians feel poorer, and they do now.

It turns out the only thing now left driving the Australian economy is population growth. We have an economic growth strategy from those opposite that is nothing more than more population growth. Around 75 per cent of that is immigration growth. That's the only thing left. That's the only source of growth they've got left in the economy, and it's why Australians are feeling worse off. In the last year alone, we've seen population growth in this country of over 620,000 people, of which 433,000 have come through immigration. We believe firmly that Australia is a great immigrant nation, but you cannot drive the growth of an economy on population. It has to be based on prosperity. We believe in prosperity, productivity and population—all of the above, not one as a replacement for the others. The Labor government has given up on prosperity and is replacing it with population growth.

If you look at productivity, the picture is absolutely appalling. In the last five quarters since Labor came to government, labour productivity in this country, as output per hour worked, has dropped by 6.6 percent. As the member for Parramatta opposite has written on a number of occasions, strong labour productivity growth is a necessary condition for prosperity. When it has dropped by 6.6 per cent in a single year, you know Australians are going to be worse off. They are worse off under this government. Meanwhile, as I said a little earlier, we have had a 9.6 per cent increase in prices. We have seen 11 interest-rate increases under this government. In fact, the last time we saw interest rates anywhere near where they are today was under another Labor government. Meanwhile, on energy prices, you only have to walk down the street before an Australian pulls you up and says, 'I've got an energy bill; they promised me a $275 reduction.' No sign of that. No sign of that at all. Meanwhile, the cost of groceries, the cost of insurance and the cost of housing are all going up under this government.

Australians are suffering for this. This is having an impact everywhere you go. I've been touring a number of food banks right across this great country in recent months. Traditionally, you'd see people there who are really doing it tough, who you would expect to see at a place like that—people who have lost their jobs or who are renting. Now we're seeing people with a mortgage, people with jobs, not able to put food on the table for their families. You only have to look at what has happened to the price of everything to see what is going on. Australians are responding. They're responding as they have to. How are they responding? They're digging deep into their savings. We've seen a collapse in savings in this country because that's all they can do. They have to give up on their aspirations for the future. They have to give up on their aspirations to save, to put together money to buy a house, to pay down the mortgage. They're digging deep into their savings to pay for this huge increase in the price of absolutely everything.

But they're going further than that. They're working harder. They are putting in more hours. They are taking the opportunity to put in more hours because that's the only way they can do it. When they do that, they are making sacrifices. It means they can't pick up the kids from school. It means they have to give up on going to that school concert they expected to go to or taking the kids to sport. These are the sacrifices that Australians are making, and nowhere is that worse than amongst small-business people. We are seeing small-business people who can't make money unless they put in extra hours for nothing. That's what's going on. That's what goes on under a Labor government that is distracted and focusing on all the wrong things. They are focused on their Canberra Voice—

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