Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

It is an honour to rise and speak on this matter of public importance, which the previous speaker on this side of the House, the member for Fowler, so aptly talked about. Over the course of the last 10 sitting weeks I've talked about the cost of living on no less than eight occasions in this place. Why? Because it is the most pressing issue facing my community right now. Despite the urgency, the government continues on a path that is exacerbating rather than alleviating this pain for every Australian.

No matter what metric you consider, the evidence is obvious. We've experienced double-digit annual percentage increases in basic foods such as dairy and related products, bread and cereals. From talking with my farmers, they are not receiving record prices for their crops. Electricity price rises are even greater, rising 23 per cent in South Australia in 2023. However, this does not reflect individual experiences. I've been contacted by some residents who have received increases of more than 50 per cent.

The impact on businesses is simply devastating. Earlier this month the Advertiser reported that the hospitality crisis is so widespread that 'every owner is considering throwing in the towel', blaming spiralling utility bills and the cost-of-living crisis curtailing consumer spending. This year alone, nine hospitality businesses have closed—and we're only in March: Little Banksia Tree, Enzo's Ristorante, the Edinburgh Castle Hotel, Folklore Cafe and Morris Bakery, just to name a few. Big Shed Brewing is battling to stay open. The Stag, on Rundle Street, is up for sale. These businesses are household names in South Australia. The Duke of Brunswick Hotel reported energy bill increases of 30 per cent and wage cost increases of 21.5 per cent. How can you run a business with those price rises? They installed solar panels; the owners were hoping that that would reduce their electricity bills, but they're still more than $4,000 a month. Rising costs and reduced revenue is destroying businesses and the employees that rely on those businesses to be successful, and it's creating a vicious cycle.

It's no wonder that business revenue is down. Collectively, increases in energy, food and mortgages have pushed Australians to the edge and left them with no disposable income. Successive interest rates rises have seen the average repayment on a mortgage of $750,000 rise by about $2,000 per month; that is $24,000 a year that people have to find after tax money.

The effect of this is revealed in the latest research released by Roy Morgan, which identified that 31 per cent of mortgage households, or one in three, are at risk of mortgage stress in the three months to January this year. In number terms, this equates to 1.6 million mortgage holders now in the risk category—an increase from the 1,527,000 recorded in December last year. More concerningly, the number of mortgage holders who are at extreme risk is 994,000—you could say a million, or 19.8 per cent—as of January. This is above the long-term decade average of 14.3 per cent. This is something we're not talking about in this place, and this is deeply concerning. We are approaching levels of stress not seen since the global financial crisis.

This takes me back to my comments with respect to the path and the policies that we have in here, that the government has taken in here. I think one very sobering conversation that we need to have is around where all this demand is coming from. We need to be honest; the demand is coming from record migration that we have seen, to create a big Australia, that is putting huge demand on housing and huge demand on everything we buy. The simple economics is: the more demand you create—and this is artificial demand—the more that prices go up for everything. We need to have an honest conversation in this nation about this. We've talked about the duopolies in this place. We've talked about travel. We've talked about controlling prices and industrial relations. There is much we can do in this place to alleviate the suffering that families and households are experiencing, but, until we get migration under control, until we realise there aren't homes for people to live in, we're not going to address this at all.

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