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

Before the last election, the Albanese Labor Party promised Australians a great deal. They promised lower electricity prices—indeed, $275. They promised cheaper mortgages. They promised there wouldn't be any new taxes. They promised a lower cost of living. And they said that life would be easier. But after three budgets in a row, life is only harder for hardworking Australians. And every single one of those promises has been broken. We have just seen the third budget flop in a row. One's bad, two's awful but three is three strikes. It is a shame on those opposite that, after three budgets, they still haven't been able to deliver the most basic promises they made before the election.

The truth is that Australians are poorer under Labor. We know that the real disposable incomes of Australians have dropped by 7½ per cent in two years. We haven't seen that before in our lifetimes—7½ per cent in two years. And we see it on the ground wherever we go: pensioners struggling to pay their energy bills and pay for their groceries; hardworking Australians battling with a mortgage, working extra hours and not being able to pay for the kids sport because they have to pay their mortgage; young students who can't pay the rent because there's no spare housing for them when they come from a regional area to go to university. Australian after Australian is struggling because this government has failed to deliver on its most basic promises and has now delivered its third budget flop.

Those opposite claim that real wages have gone up. Well, the facts are there in the budget papers. I added them up for the three years of this term of parliament—I gave them the benefit of an extra year, because they're promising a lot for the next year. I thought, I'll add up the WPI, the wage price index, and the CPI over the three years. And guess what? The CPI prices go up faster than wages. Real wages go down under Labor. The minister has left the chamber, because he didn't want to hear the truth. He likes to spin his own story to Australians. But it's good to see the minister opposite here, who's an economist. He knows that, over three years, if the price index goes up faster than the wage price index, that means real wages have gone down.

Before this budget we said that there were three tests for the budget. The first is that it needs to restore Australians' standard of living to where it was before Labor made Australians poorer—before we saw this domestic, homegrown inflation that Labor has created and imposed on all Australians. We said that the second test is that they need to re-establish a pathway to prosperity and aspiration, opportunity for Australians that is led by business, particularly small business, because we know that it's not government that pays the bills in the end; it's hardworking Australians, who pay their taxes, and it's business that create opportunities and pay tax that can pay for our schools, for our roads, for our hospitals and so on. And the third test was that they would re-establish the basic fiscal disciplines that have been in place in this country since the 1990s, since the Charter of Budget Honesty Act was put in place by Peter Costello—structural budget balance, making sure the economy grows faster than spending.

This budget confirms that none of those tests have been met. Australians are poorer under Labor and will remain poorer under this Labor government. The fiscal disciplines that were established in the 1990s have gone out the window, and they haven't been replaced with anything other than this big-spending Treasurer's aspiration, which is purely political. We know where he wants to get to in the coming years. And the budget confirms that spending is up—$315 billion of extra spending across the forwards since Labor came to power. That is $30,000 for every Australian household. When I talk to Australians about how they're feeling at the moment, I don't hear anyone saying that they're $30,000 better off than they were when Labor came into power. In fact, I hear them constantly saying that they are worse off than when Labor came into power—because they are worse off than when Labor came into power.

Spending is growing faster than the economy, at double the pace. And when spending is growing faster than the economy, guess what happens? You go into deep deficit, and in two years time we're going to see a $43 billion structural deficit, and that is throwing fuel on the inflationary fire. Meanwhile, unemployment is expected to rise, with 175,000 jobs to be lost in the coming years under Labor as unemployment goes up to 4½ per cent.

In this budget we see that immigration is up to 1.67 million. Australians are struggling to find a home. When we left government we said that over the five years through to 2026-27 immigration would be under 1.1 million. By the October budget, just after Labor had taken power, they decided it should be 1.2 million. By the next budget, in 2023-24, the number had become 1.5 million. And then by the 2023-24 MYEFO it had become 1.6 million. In the budget that was handed down last night, over that five-year period it's just under 1.7 million. That's an increase of $600,000. Indeed, just in the year 2022-23 we saw an increase from 180,000 to 528,000 and, in the meantime, housing construction has not moved. They promised 1.2 million houses and even their own national housing supply council says they are pulling up short of 950,000 and most in the industry think it will be well short of that.

Many third parties have made comments about this budget. The economist Steven Hamilton called this budget 'downright reckless'. We saw the HSBC chief economist, Paul Bloxham, say that the budget supports underlying inflation rather than lowering it. University of New South Wales Professor Richard Holden says, 'Last year's budget expanded net spending by 0.8 per cent of GDP. This year it is 1.5 and those increases look permanent. They're inflationary, irresponsible and hard to reverse. They deepen and cement our structural budget deficit.' S&P, sadly, has said, 'We no longer expect the RBA to cut its policy rate in calendar (year) 2024,' as a result of this budget.

Australians are suffering not just from rising prices, and we have seen rising prices across the board—housing up 12 per cent, rent up 12 per cent, insurance up 26 per cent, electricity up 18 per cent and gas up 25 per cent—but they are also suffering from 12 interest rate increases under those opposite. It is clear this budget is doing absolutely nothing to bring those interest rates down. Cherelle Murphy from EY said:

… the 2024-25 Federal Budget needed to do three things: not add to spending, unless offsetting it elsewhere; change existing policy to lower spending and find new revenue that will persist over time to close the structural balance; and put in place policies to assist the private sector to maximise productivity growth.

What you see in this budget is it is not a budget for the national interest, not a budget for the hard-working Australians trying to pay their mortgages and make ends meet but a budget for this Treasurer and this Prime Minister for an election. That is what you see. This is not a budget in the national interest; this is a budget in Labor's interest.

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