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

I will take the interjection from the member opposite. In the latest data that came out today and in the last week, we have seen nominal wages rise—and they're crowing about it—4.1 per cent, but guess what the living cost index for employees did at the same time. That went up 6.2 per cent. This is what happens when you don't get the basics right. As for the MIA bill, the only thing being made in Australia right now is inflation. This MIA bill is more about spin than it is about delivery.

Economist after economist has criticised this policy, and I will come back and talk more about some of the comments that have been made about it, but, every day, we hear more about the dodgy processes, the lack of economic scrutiny and the double standards that have already applied in this program. This is a slogan in search of a policy. The government cannot solve the cost-of-living crisis by throwing hard-earned taxpayers' money around. That is not the way to do it. The Prime Minister might want to pick winners. He might think he's got the answers and he knows how to pick winners, but Australian families will lose from Labor's reckless spending.

This bill is a demonstration of Labor's wrong priorities. After spending the whole of 2023 talking about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice instead of the cost of living, Australians were hopeful, because we're an optimistic lot, that the next year, 2024, would be the year when the Prime Minister focused on taming inflation, but instead he revealed a plan to spend even more money to make productivity worse and which has failed to gain any support from mainstream economists. Labor has plenty of handouts to lobbyists and overseas corporations, many of whom have other ways to finance than relying on government, but they're keen to hand out the money anyway. But they don't have a plan that is showing any progress whatsoever for struggling families and small businesses. Meanwhile, we are all seeing a full-blown cost-of-living crisis and a cost-of-doing-business crisis in this country.

We are absolutely at the back of the pack when it comes to dealing with inflation. Those opposite want to make international comparisons. I will make the international comparison that matters. Since December last year, we are the only one of the major advanced countries in the world where inflation is going up and not down. We're the only one. Back of the pack! And this hapless Treasurer and government continue to crow and tell Australians they've never had it so good. Well, I tell you what: the Australians I talk to beg to differ. Meanwhile, we are in a GDP per capita recession. We haven't seen GDP per person go up in five quarters. It's a household recession as Australians go backwards.

Since Labor came to power, as I said, prices are up, but the living cost index for employees is up 18 per cent. Personal income tax payments for Australians are up 20 per cent. Real wages, I've already said, are down nine per cent. Living standards—real disposable income—are down by eight per cent. As for household savings, Australians have given up saving. How can you save when the purchasing power in your pay packet has collapsed? You can't because you have to spend that money just to get by every single day. This bill does absolutely nothing to alleviate the pressures on struggling families and small businesses, and we know this big spending agenda will only make inflation worse. Households are going to great lengths to keep their heads above water. They're cracking open the piggy bank because there's nothing else left to do.

These bills expand the role of Export Finance Australia and ARENA and establish a national interest framework that retrospectively underpins the government's Future Made in Australia policy. The accompanying omnibus bill expands EFA's remit to fund domestic industries—it's called Export Finance Australia, but it will now fund domestic industries—and nominates the Minister for Finance as an additional responsible minister. The omnibus bill also expands ARENA's functions from a pure R&D and demonstration to support manufacturing and deployment.

Importantly, embedded in that is the fact that this legislation fundamentally changes the purposes, duties and roles of ARENA. ARENA has always been a research and development agency. This is clear in its remit, the explanatory memorandum and the second reading speech. Labor in opposition opposed even expanding the remit to cover sensible measures like net zero related R&D expenditure, including carbon capture and storage and blue hydrogen. They opposed that when they were in opposition. How times have changed. Now they're expanding that remit even further into deployment and manufacturing and because it suits the purposes of those they're seeking to please. If ARENA is doing deployment, why is the CEFC even needed? That was the role of the CEFC—deployment. If these industries are commercially viable, why do they need government funding?

But Labor's changes are a little more insidious when you look a little deeper. The bill gives the Minister for Climate Change and Energy the ability to boost its funding at the stroke of a pen. That's how it works; that's how it's set up. There's no parliamentary oversight, no scrutiny, just some delegated legislation. And the government can roll out up to $3.98 billion—let's call it $4 billion because it's pretty much that—out the door in an election year. That's how it's structured—no scrutiny. This is a slush fund, plain and simple. That is what's being set up here by Labor. Australians are already on the hook for Labor's inflation. We've seen them spend $315 billion since they came to power, $30,000 for every Australian household. I don't think many Australian households feel they're getting value for money from that. Added into that now is this $4 billion slush fund for an election year. That's what they're planning to do.

The legislation puts the Treasurer and his department in a position to decide whether a sector of the Australian economy deserves investment. It will be up to him. This is the guy who wrote the 6,000-word essay on remaking capitalism. He's going to be capitalism in this country, as far as he's concern. The Treasurer has never run a business and described his private sector career as 'six long, long months'. Those were his words. His private sector career was six long, long months. And he's going to be deciding which sectors in Australia get hard-earned taxpayers' money.

His department will consider the investment against a very narrow set of criteria. They've provided evidence to Senate estimates that key investments for Australia's energy future and sovereign capability—be they carbon capture and storage, gas, blue hydrogen, uranium or nuclear—will not be eligible and have not been considered as part of the framework. It's very clear the criteria here are ideological and based on the Treasurer and the government's biases.

The analysis to greenlight these investments will be guided by a Treasurer who has never worked in business seriously and a department of bureaucrats who, under this government, have made a reputation for failing to understand business. Meanwhile, their Orwellian community benefit principles will entrench union involvement in the workplace and replicate much of the same social procurement policies that have enabled the CFMEU's corrupt conduct to flourish across this nation.

The truth of the matter is that those links, that requirement for union involvement, is part of what we see with everything that Labor is doing here. We have no problem with workers choosing to be part of a union. Choice is what we believe in. What we don't believe in is allowing the construction industry to be controlled by a union that has links to underworld figures and bikie gangs. That's the truth of the situation right now.

This is not the way to build a healthy and productive economy. The Business Council has warned that these procurement rules are at risk of enabling this behaviour, while it risks subsidising businesses Australia would never have a comparative advantage in. The BCA rightly points out that this is important, because there are hard-earned taxpayer dollars at stake. We on this side of the House understand how hard small businesses work to create those taxpayer dollars. They're not created by the Public Service. They're created by hardworking businesspeople in this country—

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