Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Do take the recommendation; it's good. It's all about values based capitalism. There's a great line in that article:'2023 will be the year we build a better capitalism'. How did that go? Let's have a look. It was a big claim. It was a mighty claim. It is a claim you can only make when there is so much hubris and arrogance in that honeymoon period that not a single journalist will actually hold you to account for the claims you make. But let's look have a look now with some runs on the board and see how this played out.

It's the longest GDP per capita recession since we've recorded these figures—the worst performance we could possibly have. That's not a great start. Real disposable income has collapsed by 8.7 per cent. As the member for Hume pointed out, that dollar coin that the Prime Minister held up during his campaign is now worth about 80c—great job! Remaking capitalism really worked. Household savings have collapsed 10 percentage points. What does that mean? It means that 21- to 29-year-old kids who are looking at the price of housing go through the roof have no ability to save for that deposit. There was a great cartoon early in this term of government. There was a young child chasing a balloon in the shape of a house as it was blown away from her. That's exactly what remaking capitalism has done for us.

We have the highest number of business insolvencies on record, and I'm happy to say that. It's a number from ASIC. I know the Prime Minister didn't like that number. Unfortunately, it's just a fact. The highest number of business insolvencies on record: remaking capitalism. That's what they meant. This is on purpose. This is what they were trying to do. Labour productivity has fallen 6.3 per cent. We're producing less, we're less effective and, incredibly—think about this—there is a productivity fall in a skills shortage. So we have people who could be doing more while we have a shortage of people and there are more skills that we need. Fantastic! What a remade capitalism!

See this speech in context