James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to start by thanking the member for Forde for bringing this very important debate into this chamber, the people's house. Any local member that's out in their community, talking to and listening to their constituents, will know just how tough people are doing it right now across this country. I know how tough they're doing it in my seat of Sturt and I'm sure that's no different to any other electorate across the country right now.

After 2½ years of this government, unfortunately, things are tougher than ever and families are making very difficult decisions around the kitchen table about the household budget because costs are ever increasing and they are finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet. Coming into the Christmas season, it's a particularly tough time for some families that have to make sacrifices they haven't had to make before in the period leading into Christmas. There's just not enough discretionary spending left in the household budget because the cost of things that you can't avoid are so very high under this Labor government.

Whether you've got a mortgage or you rent, whether you're going to the supermarket, buying your groceries or whether it's been the dramatic increase in energy prices—your electricity and gas bills—those costs have dramatically increased 2½ years into this Albanese government. Of course, we'll never forget that Labor said that, by voting for them, bills would go down by $275 a year. Well, I've never had anyone come into my office since Labor came to power and say that anything like that has occurred to their household electricity bills. They're all going up.

The previous speaker interestingly just gave us a lecture on fiscal discipline and responsibility, and I suppose maybe he is or isn't on the inside with how this government is going to pursue their own fiscal decisions in the lead-up to the next election. What we've heard so far—what we've seen so far—is that this government seems to be interested in spending a lot of money going into the next election. We've seen the beginnings of some massive multibillion dollar commitments, but we hear rumours of many more to come. We hear that the federal Labor government want to follow the strategy of the Queensland state Labor government, which is interesting given the result of that election just recently. We hear of massive amounts of expenditure. They are trying to throw money around and buy the votes of the Australian people in the lead-up to the election to try and make it look like they have a plan to deal with this cost-of-living crisis that we're in. What that'll mean is a lot more—dramatically more—spending from this government. The last thing that we need right now is a huge amount of government spending when interest rates are high and when inflation has been running hot. The worst thing for our economy that we could see happen right now is an enormous amount of government spending. You don't have to take my word for that, because we know that the Reserve Bank governor herself has made it very clear that big spending government programs will increase inflation and will of course impact on the decision-making processes that the Reserve Bank go through in the months ahead.

Everyone, hopefully, wants to see interest rates coming down, and everyone wants to see the Reserve Bank be in a position where the data supports them reducing the cash rate. I want that for my constituents. I'm sure everyone wants to see that happen. So, if the Reserve Bank governor is making comments and giving warnings about massive increases in government spending, meaning that they will be in a position where they can't reduce interest rates—in fact, they might have to go up again, depending on just how significant this Labor spendathon that we anticipate happening in the months ahead is—then that is a frightening prospect for the average Australian family. Going into this election campaign, if Labor are announcing multiple billion-dollar cash giveaways to try and buy votes from people, I know that the average Australian will know what that means: that higher government spending is inflationary. It means your mortgage is higher, it means your rents are higher, it means all the costs in our economy will be going up, and, at the same time, we might have to see taxes go up as well for this government to meet some of those costs. We don't know whether they'll hand down a budget. It doesn't feel like they will. I wouldn't want to if I were them, given what they've got planned in store. But it is a frightening prospect for the people of this country that Labor are going to spend, spend, spend and increase interest rates in the process.

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