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

I'm sorry to say that since Labor has been in power, we have seen an eight per cent reduction in the standard of living of Australians and we've seen a nine per cent cut in real wages—a nine per cent cut!

I see the member for Parramatta has gone—oh, he's back again! He didn't understand that you measure real wages against the employee living costs index, which means they've gone down by nine per cent.

I'm going to come to reshuffles in a moment, Member for Parramatta. I notice you're behaving today; you're behaving very well. Good on you. He's in the running!

The second test for the budget was to restore our way of life, because under those opposite we are seeing fewer young Australians holding out hope that they can own a home. The third test was to restore the budget discipline and transparency that was in place before they came into power.

We had a sneak preview in the newspapers over the last 24 hours about how the Prime Minister intends to spend his break. Phil Coorey, of the AFR, said that the Prime Minister 'has taken over the reins of policy development'. The Prime Minister's new edict:

… requires ministers to run all new proposals directly through the prime minister's office for approval …

If you want to get more gas into the network, the minister at the table, the Minister for Resources, is going to have to have a chat to the Prime Minister, who we know doesn't love gas. We know he doesn't like it. It is also clear from this that the Treasurer has lost control of his role, which is to get inflation down. He's failed.

We also know that during the break there's more homework being done by the Prime Minister. He's going to do a reshuffle. It is time to move out some of these ministers who have absolutely failed. We have seen immigration rise at a rate which is completely unsustainable for the housing supply in this country. We've seen population growth of over 1.2 million in two years, the vast majority of which is immigration. And housing supply in that time has been going down, not up—closer to a quarter of a million. That simply doesn't work out. When you have four or five or six or seven houses, as the member for Parramatta does, how do those numbers work?

There is a reshuffle coming up, and I think it's time to give the member for Parramatta a go—what do you think? We'll give him a go. We think he needs a bit of a go. He's been auditioning regularly. I'm sure he's going to give a riveting speech in a moment. But it is time to give him a go.

There is an alternative for how the Prime Minister and the Treasurer could spend this winter break, and that is to restore Australians' standard of living. As I said earlier, living standards have collapsed by eight per cent in the last two years under Labor. How can you achieve that in two years? Only a Treasurer who is completely inept, who wrote a thesis that was a love letter to Paul Keating could possibly deliver that kind of outcome. At the same time, Labor promised to get real wages moving. They're moving alright; they went down nine per cent! They also promised to address the cost of living. They're certainly adding to the cost of living: on average prices have gone up 10 per cent; substantially more for gas, for electricity, for insurance, for rentals—you name it. We have seen Australians suffering under serious pressure.

We hear economists giving their views on what's been going on and what needs to be done during the winter break. Chris Richardson, a highly respected economist, said:

Governments have abandoned the field in the inflation fight. We are fighting the inflation fight one-handed.

I think that's generous. He goes on to say, 'Mortgage relief is a very, very long way away.' Deutsche Bank economist Phil O'Donoghue says, 'Underlying inflation is intolerably high in Australia.'

A moment ago we got another sneak preview as to how the Prime Minister is going to spend this winter break. We know that he has always wanted to impose a tax on the family home. We know he has always wanted to get rid of negative gearing. In fact, it was the minister for energy who, many years ago, belled the cat on this and said, 'If you don't like it, don't vote for it.' It was on these exact policies. Their vision for housing is not a vision where Australians own their home. Their vision for housing is one where homes are owned by industry super funds and built by the CFMEU and where there are apartments for everybody. The standalone home is coming to an end; they're not being built anymore under this government. It's a dystopian vision that those opposite have always wanted for housing in this country.

I'll tell you what we believe in. We believe in Australians having the opportunity to own their home and of having the opportunity to own a home which is not necessarily an apartment. Some will want to, but many will want to own a standalone home—one that they buy by taking on a mortgage that they can repay over time. That means you have to get inflation down and you have to get interest rates down. The real job for those opposite over this break is to achieve exactly that outcome.

You don't achieve that by adding $315 billion of spending. But, over this break, if we believe Phillip Coorey's article from the last 24 hours—and he tends to get it right—what we will actually see is the Prime Minister taking a big pot of money that's been hidden in the budget and spending it and, in the process, adding fuel to the inflationary fire. We can hope this winter break is used for a better outcome for Australians, but the truth is that that has not been achieved by this government in the past and there is little hope that it will be achieved in the future.

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