Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the motion moved by the member for Forde. Many of the people in the electorate of Longman, which I proudly serve, are doing it tough. The question is: why? Of course there are factors that contribute to why we have seen, since Labor came into government, a real decline on Australians' standard of living. But these factors are not unique to this government. The specifics, or factors, that contribute to why interest rates rise, why household expenses rise and why inflation grows at a faster rate than real wages grow vary.

Whether it be a conflict at home or abroad, unforeseen blips in the stock markets around the globe, a GFC or a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic, every government has faced unforeseen challenges that affect our Australian economy and our way of life. But the test for any government is how these issues are dealt with to minimise, or even to remove entirely, the impacts on the Australian people. This, after all, is one of the key responsibilities of any government, regardless of which party is the incumbent.

Forget the spin, the headlines, the talk, the political war of words and the name-calling. The real litmus tests on the success or failure of any government on how they have performed in neutralising the impacts on the people we were elected to serve—the Australian public—are simply measuring the data and comparing that data to previous governments and long-term averages, and, most of all, the actual real-life experiences of people. When we do this measurement and comparison at this time, the results are not good, to say the least.

We can see that interest rates have risen 12 times since this government came to power, meaning that people paying off their family homes are now paying on average an extra $2,916 per month on their mortgage, while the average household income has only risen by $616 per month in the same period. Electricity has risen by an average of 30 per household, or $420, since the last election. Rents have risen $520 per month on average in the city of Moreton Bay as investors with mortgages are paying much higher repayments with the 12 interest rate rises, which in most cases they simply cannot absorb and have to pass on either in full or in part to tenants already enduring this homegrown cost-of-living crisis.

Why has this homegrown cost-of-living crisis happened on this Labor government's watch? Would the results have been different under a coalition government? History demonstrates that, yes, Australians have always fared better under a coalition government. Historically, real wages have been higher and interest rates and inflation have been lower under a coalition government. However, there is an underlying issue people rarely speak of: business confidence. I can testify that, in my own small-business experience, quite simply, whenever the coalition has been in government, my businesses have experienced double-digit growth, including during the pandemic. In contrast, when Labor have been in government, the businesses I was involved in had either single-digit growth or, worse, no growth. From speaking to other small-business owners, the experience in the main is much the same.

What does this mean practically? It means that, when business confidence is down when we have a Labor government, small and medium businesses stop spending and investing in their businesses. Just the bare necessities are purchased. New staff are not employed and in some cases staff must be laid off to the lack of growth. This all contributes to a slowing economy. When the coalition is in government, business confidence is high and, as a result, small and medium businesses invest in new equipment and hire extra staff in anticipation of growth in their businesses. This of course leads to cash being fed into the economy through higher tax receipts as businesses become more profitable, which slows inflation. Unfortunately, with the fall in business confidence and the following tightening of their purse strings, the Labor governments begin to spend taxpayers' money on splashing tax to help alleviate the inevitable hard times the Australian people begin to suffer, which is a short-term fix that just increases debt and inflation, only compounding the problem.

To exacerbate the problem even further, as the unemployment rate rises, Labor governments are forced to employ more public servants to keep the unemployment rate down, as evidenced in this term, for which the data from the ABS shows that around 90 per cent of new jobs in 2024 were in the public sector or industries like aged care or the NDIS, which are funded by the federal government, compared with more than 50 per cent of new jobs created in the private sector under the previous coalition government. Of course, we need a healthy Public Service, but private sector jobs create revenue for government through taxes paid, whereas Public Service jobs are just straight out costs to government.

Australians aren't stupid. They will see through the spin, the headlines and the personal attacks, and the question they will ask themselves before they vote at the next election is: am I better off than I was three years ago? The answer in nearly every case will be a resounding 'no'.

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