Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Unquestionably, the most important issue facing Australians today is the cost of living. People are struggling to make ends meet, they're struggling to put food on the table, they're struggling to pay their energy bills, and more Australians than ever before are in housing stress—unable to pay their rent or unable to pay their mortgage. But the question that this House has to consider is: what can we as governments do about that? Unfortunately, the Liberal Party, who moved this motion, have presented no plan for what to do about it and no contrition for the fact that they left Australia in this state, where we have extremely high pressures on the cost of living and the highest inflation that we've had for more than a decade.

When the Liberal Party left office, inflation was running on a quarterly basis at the highest rate in more than two decades. When the Liberals left office, food prices in Australia were at levels 54 per cent higher than the global average. Australia was one of the most expensive places in the world to purchase food, despite us being a net food exporter. The mover of this motion would do well to consider how we got into that situation and, most importantly, what we're going to do about it.

The Albanese Labor government are working on two levels. First of all, on the macro level, we're working to bring inflation down to make sure that we reduce cost-of-living pressures and help Australians by not having an ongoing high inflation rate that continues to chip away at their real earnings and continues to make it harder and harder for them to make ends meet. Secondly, we're working on the micro level to provide individuals with targeted cost-of-living relief, to boost competition across our economy and to invest in infrastructure and other supply chain bottlenecks to make sure that the efficiencies in our system deliver the best possible prices for Australian consumers.

Let's begin with the macro question. While the previous government spent up big, left Australians with a billion dollars of debt, left Australia with a high inflation rate and couldn't deliver a budget surplus, this government has taken prudent action to get inflation down, we've delivered a budget surplus and we've created more savings in two budgets than they produced in five. We've created an infrastructure program and programs to remove bottlenecks in our supply chains and keep the costs of goods low. Most importantly, we've implemented mechanisms to make sure that we have competition in our markets. We've appointed the ACCC to do an investigation into the supermarket sector, we've appointed Craig Emerson to analyse small suppliers and make sure they're not abused by the large supermarkets and we've appointed CHOICE, the consumer group, to crunch the data and look at which supermarkets are charging the most and which supermarkets are the best value. So across these measures—macroeconomic and microeconomic measures—the Albanese government is making real inroads to ensure that Australians are alleviated in their cost-of-living pressure, that we bring down prices over time and that more Australians can make ends meet.

The other half of this equation—this isn't just about prices. Prices are one part of cost of living, but the other part of the cost of living, of course, is wages. The higher your wages are, the higher the prices you can tolerate; the lower your wages are, the more difficult it is to make ends meet no matter what situation the price level is in. That's why the Albanese government has worked so hard to turn around the decade of zero wages growth that was presided over by the Liberal party.

I'm an economist and, if you ask me what the most extraordinary fact about the Australian economy over the last 10 years is, I would say it's that fact—that in 10 years we had zero real wages growth. That's 10 years in which Australian workers were going backwards. Despite growth in technology, progress right through our economy and expansion in profits, workers were getting none of that. In fact, when the Liberals left office, real wages were falling at 3.5 per cent.

Under this Labor government, we've had three successive quarters of positive real wages growth. That's what we're doing about the cost of living. We're bringing prices down by reducing inflation and increasing wages to help families make ends meet.

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