Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It is true that Australians are doing it tough, and it is true that cost-of-living pressures are bearing down upon families and small businesses across the country. What is also true is that the answers to these questions do not lie in the drongo economics that were practised for nine years by those opposite and then espoused for another 9½ minutes by the shadow Treasurer. It is true that the causes of inflation are coming at us from around the world. Energy prices kicked off again because the energy cartels in the Middle East and in Russia have restricted supply, putting pressure on the bowser price of petrol and diesel in this country and in every other country around the world. It is true that the inflationary pressures, which are still bearing down upon us, are because of the war in Ukraine and the uncertainty created in the Middle East. They didn't start in Australia, but they are being felt by households and small businesses in this country. It is absolutely true that those international pressures are bearing down upon households in Australia.

It is also true that there are domestic causes of this inflation. The No. 1 cause of domestic inflation is the abysmal state in which the coalition parties left the country and left the budget when they departed from government in May last year. We were incredibly poorly prepared to deal with supply chain shortages that are now bearing upon industries across the economy, particularly the building industry. The former government chased offshore what remained of manufacturing businesses in this country, and they were not ashamed about it. In the words of the former Treasurer: 'They can leave.' It wasn't just the trade and goods sector. It was everywhere across the economy.

It took a lot of chutzpah for the member for Hume to talk about energy prices, because there is not another person in this parliament who is more responsible for the high price of energy that Australian households and businesses are experiencing today. And I'm not talking about the fact that he authorised a significant increase in the wholesale price of energy immediately before the election but hid it from the Australian people. I'm talking about the fact that there's not another person in parliament who is more responsible for destroying every single energy policy that they attempted to put together from that side of the parliament when they were in government. Is there any wonder why we saw a capital strike in this country? Is there any wonder why we saw a massive decrease in the amount of scaled electricity production in this country? Is there any reason why we have a transmission and distribution system in this country which is a decade behind where we need to be? It is because of the policies of the member for Hume and the coalition parties in particular.

A skills crisis and a skills shortage. You can't fix them overnight, but the Minister for Skills and Training is doing a valiant job at putting in place the policies to train the next generation of apprentices and trainees to ensure that we are not reliant on the lazy response that they left us with, where the answer to any skills shortage was to bring people in from overseas. Yes, it is important. We've always been a nation that has relied on immigration, but we should be training our own and using our own first. The entry price to credibility on the cost of living is to have done something about it when you had the opportunity.

They talk about the problems that we have with housing affordability and rental affordability. You would have thought that a party that was concerned about these things would have voted in favour of a policy that was going to deliver 30,000 additional affordable homes in this country. Did they vote for it? No, they voted against it. You'd think that a party that was concerned about cost-of-living issues would have voted for cheaper medicines. Did they vote for them? No, they voted against them. You would have thought that a party concerned about energy bill relief would have voted in favour of the government's policies to provide energy bill relief for small businesses and for households. They voted against it. The credibility of this mob over here is zero when it comes to the price of living and the cost pressures bearing upon households across this country.

You don't just have to deal with household relief. There are two parts to affordability and cost-of-living issues. There's the expense part but there's also the income part. That mob have opposed every single wage increase—and I'm not just talking about the last 18 months; I'm talking about the last 120 years of wage determinations in this country. There is not a pay rise that has flowed to workers, particularly low-paid workers, in this country for the last 123 years that that mob have not opposed. The same was the case when it came to the last two pay rises awarded by the Fair Work Commission—supported by the Labor Party and opposed by the coalition.

The entry price to a discussion on the cost of living is to have done something about it when you had the opportunity. They had an opportunity for nine years in government and they made the situation worse. They had the opportunity to do something about it by supporting our policies, but they opposed them. In question time earlier today the Minister for Early Childhood Education gave an example of how our childcare policies are actually significantly decreasing the price that households are paying for child care. On their watch they went up 40 per cent and on our watch they went down 18 per cent. That's what a government does when it is focused on cost-of-living relief.

In fact, let's look through the raft of policies. There's fee-free TAFE. You had an opportunity to do it for 10 years while in government, but you didn't do it. Then there is building more affordable homes, expanding paid parental leave and more Medicare. The biggest single investment in bulk-billing in our nation's history was led by the minister for health. These very same policies were opposed by the current Leader of the Opposition when he was the health minister. These are the sorts of things you do when you're concerned about providing household relief.

I want to say something about fiscal management, because this is the big one. They had nine years to balance the budget—under the Abbott government, under the Turnbull government and under the Morrison government. Year after year after lonely year they promised to do it, issued press releases and even minted coffee mugs, but did they produce a surplus? In fact, the member for Riverina has the surplus coffee mugs but he didn't get the budget surplus. There was a surplus of coffee mugs but no budget surplus. In our very first budget we turned the budget around from a $78 billion deficit to a $20 billion surplus. They promised it for nine years and we delivered it in our first budget. That is what a government that is more focused on policy outcomes than press releases does to assist on cost-of-living issues.

You don't have to take our word for it. The member for Hume had to go back not one or two governors of the Reserve Bank but actually three Reserve Bank governors—the Reserve Bank board from three terms ago—to find somebody who agreed with his policy. You don't have to go that far back. Just listen to what the current Reserve Bank governor has had to say about the Labor government's policies. She has acknowledged the fact that the government's fiscal restraint—the fact that we are returning over 78 per cent of new government revenue to paying down the debt we inherited from the mob over there—is actually taking pressure off inflation and making the Reserve Bank's job easier than it would otherwise be.

It's not about press releases and it's not about coffee mugs. It's actually getting on with doing the job.

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