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

As every member of this place should know, Australians are facing a raging cost-of-living crisis right now. It's at times like these that they need a government they can rely on. They need a Prime Minister who is going to deliver results. They need a leader they can trust. They want to have a government and a Prime Minister that has their back and that treats their priorities as his priorities and as the government's priorities—getting that raging cost-of-living crisis under control.

Before the election that's how the Prime Minister positioned himself and the Labor Party. Unfortunately, Australians were sold a pup because, before the election, they were promised that their electricity bills were going to go down by $275. It's October and, sadly, for many Australians that's when they receive their quarterly electricity bills. I'll tell you what: they're not seeing a $275 reduction. They're not seeing a government that has their back. They're not seeing a Prime Minister they can trust. They are not seeing a government that has their priorities as their first priorities. Before the election, the Prime Minister promised cheaper mortgages. A typical Australian family with a mortgage is paying an extra $22,000 a year in mortgage payments, and there's no end in sight. In fact, even in the last 24 hours, the Reserve Bank governor has said there is still pain in the pipeline. Many Australian families are going from variable rates to fixed rates, over 800,000 this year alone, and there'll be more next year.

We know that capital markets, bond markets, are telling us that the long-term interest rate is to be over 4.6 per cent. That's higher than the current cash rate. There is no end in sight to interest rates that are high and hurting every single Australian family with a mortgage, and small businesses because so many of them have debt, as well.

We saw before the election that this government and this Prime Minister promised higher real wages. Sadly, we have seen the exact opposite. We know from the employee living cost index that a typical Australian family, a working family, have seen their cost of living in the last 12 months rise by over nine per cent, and their wages have only risen, in nominal terms, by about a third of that. Prices are rising three times their wages. That's real wages going down.

The Prime Minister doesn't understand this. He has no comprehension of basic economics—none whatsoever. He does not understand that, when real wages go down, your wages buy less. You've got fewer goods and services you can buy. But he doesn't get it. And families are hurting. They are hurting right across this great country. They're paying more for their groceries, more for their fuel—over $2 a litre for fuel—and more for their gas. We heard that in WA we're seeing sharp increases in gas prices. The Prime Minister doesn't even understand that his ham-fisted intervention doesn't even include Western Australia. He's never across the detail. He's never across the facts. He never understands what counts for middle Australia. He has no idea whatsoever.

Australians are stoic people, and they are making difficult decisions at this time. They are making decisions to work extra hours and to not drop their kids off at school the way they normally would because they have to work extra hours. They're taking on a second job. We're seeing a sharp increase in the number of Australians who are working a second job. They're putting off going to the doctor, they're allowing their insurance policies to lapse and they're not taking the annual family holiday. As we approach Christmas, they will spend less on their kids. They're buying fewer fruit and vegetables. New mums are having to go back to work sooner than they'd like to, in order to make ends meet in their household.

At a time like this, as I said, we would expect a government to treat this issue, this cost-of-living crisis, as its first, second and third priority. But the Prime Minister has spent the year distracted, so much so that we read this in the Australian newspaper, just in the last 24 hours:

… senior ministers who had developed economic, national security and social policies and strategies were instructed to put them on ice until after the referendum.

This is a prime minister who claims he wasn't distracted, but we know he was. It was all he talked about for months on end. He didn't cry about the cost-of-living crisis facing middle Australia; he focused on a completely different issue, which we all understand was his absolute obsession. Australians told him on Saturday what they thought about his obsession. They made their views on this very, very clear.

At a time like this, there is a great deal that government can do to address a cost-of-living crisis. In energy policy, they can focus on driving down energy prices by pumping more gas into the system and by opening up the energy system to all possible technologies. They can get serious about policies that can drive down prices and not continue to focus on policies that are pushing them up. We can see a government that is focused not on competition policy but on no-competition policy. We've seen them in recent months knock competitors out of the marketplace, knock Qatar Airways out of the marketplace because of their mates in Qantas, and every Australian has to pay a price for that crony capitalism. We've seen industrial relations policies that are about their union mates, about union officials, and not about middle Australia, not about making sure we've got workplaces where employers and employees can work together to drive up real wages and productivity simultaneously. We have a productivity crisis in this country. We have never seen anything like the Labor productivity collapse we've in the last five-quarters. It has never happened before, and you simply can't get real wages up under those circumstances.

Meanwhile, typical Australians have paid 15 per cent more in the last 12 months in tax. Before the election, this government promised that there would be no new taxes. But what we see is a government that is bringing in superannuation taxes; that is going after franking credits, having promised it wouldn't; that is allowing inflation to drive up income taxes for all Australians. As their incomes—their nominal incomes, not their real incomes—go up into higher brackets, they're paying higher tax. Even this week we saw the government bring legislation into this House which will reduce accelerated depreciation for small businesses. These are hardworking Australians.

These are hardworking Australians, small-business owners all over this great country who have appreciated the government in the past—not now, in the past—that said, 'When you buy a ute, when you buy a piece of equipment that will make your business more productive, it is fair that you should be able to accelerate the depreciation.' It is a great initiative that not only encourages them to invest in pieces of equipment that drive growth in the economy but increases their productivity—and at the same time it takes out red tape. But those opposite have said they don't like that. They're going to scale it back, and every small business in this country will pay a price for that.

In workforce policy, they've made all the wrong moves. They've made ham-fisted attempts to get more older Australians into the marketplace. We have laid out policies that can address that. But, again, they've failed to pursue those.

We have a weak and incompetent Prime Minister who has been obsessed with all the wrong issues. He's failed to deliver on the cost-of-living relief that all Australians want to see because he has had the wrong priorities. He has been distracted.

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