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

I don't think the Assistant Treasurer has ever been so enthusiastic to hear from me after that diatribe. This is an enormously important topic—the government's incompetence and mismanagement. Now comes the end of our bipartisanship, because it has been two long years since the Albanese Labor government has been in power. Of course, before the last election, over two years ago, they promised a lot. They promised a $275 electricity price reduction, they promised cheaper mortgages and they promised that Australians would be better off. Even before the national account figures came out today—dire figures that they are—the Australian economy was in dire straits. This Treasurer is nothing but the 'sultan of spin'; he pretends to be a Doctor of Economics, but he's not. He's a doctor of spin. There's a true Doctor of Economics over there, while I'm talking about those opposite; he actually is a Doctor of Economics. But not the Treasurer; the Treasurer's PhD thesis was on his mentor, Paul Keating. It was nothing more than a very long love letter to Paul Keating. But this is the guy who is running the economy right now. And when you look at the results, they're truly tragic, because Australians are poorer under Labor and Australians are poorer since this Treasurer has been in the role. A typical Australian family with a mortgage is $35,000 worse off than when Labor came to power.

Those opposite like to talk about real wages. Well, here are the facts on real wages. For a typical working family, wages have collapsed, on average, by nine per cent. Indeed, the RBA governor said at estimates today, that real wages have gone down. There's no debate about that at all. The latest CPI figures show that Labor's cost-of-living crisis is hurting hardworking Australians in extraordinary ways. The numbers are really quite extraordinary: food, grocery prices, up by 11 per cent; housing is up by 14 per cent; rent by 13 per cent; electricity by 20 per cent; and gas by 25 per cent. They were going to fix the gas price, but it's up by 25 per cent. Those caps are working, aren't they? Health is up 11 per cent; education is up 11 per cent; and financial services and insurance are up 15 per cent. And consumer confidence is entrenched at recessionary lows.

Inflation in Australia is too high, it's too persistent and it is homegrown. The RBA governor, again, is calling it as she sees it. She made it clear again today that it is homegrown inflation. In fact, we know that homegrown inflation is five times the imported inflation—we see that in the data. The Economist has again declared that Australia has the most persistent stuck inflation—it's stubborn; it's not moving—in the advanced world. Our core inflation is higher than in the US, the UK, Japan, Canada and the euro area, and we are the only country amongst these where inflation is not coming down but is going up. It's gone up since December. The Treasurer say it's all tickety-boo: 'No worries, all under control; I've got it steering in the right direction. Inflation is going up beautifully.' It means he gets more revenue, of course! It's great for governments: destroy the household budget to help the government budget. That's what he's doing. But we know that our inflation is unique amongst these countries, with core inflation in Australia going up. This is the path to ruin.

But that's before we even learnt what we learned today from the national accounts, which came out only a couple of hours ago. It's clear from what came out today that there are no winners under the Albanese Labor government. Australians are poorer again and Australians are worse off. It's worth going through some of the numbers. We all see the reality on the ground every day. We see it in the food banks and we see it in our mortgage belt areas, where people are struggling just to buy the basics of life. We see it when we go to sport in our electorates and see that families are struggling even to pay the fees for their kids to play local sports.

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