Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

After listening to the government speakers, it's clear that this is a government that has stopped listening. It oscillates, whipsawing, between telling us how good Australians have it, how good unemployment is—if you listen to the Chief Government Whip over there—how good wages are, how good it is that inflation is coming down. Then it whipsaws to say, 'Oh no, we're listening on cost of living.' The truth is that after two years of not listening on cost of living, after two years of divisive social policies, after two years of pushing everything else, they are now burning the furniture in a late attempt to try and say that they are listening on the cost of living. They are saying, 'We'll throw out energy subsidies; we'll subsidise everything,' unless it's a sustainable way to bring down energy costs like we are proposing with nuclear energy.

This government has failed Middle Australia. The school year is starting, and I recently heard a story in my electorate from a mother who was cutting expenses around the house and struggling with bills and even cutting their grocery bills. But the one thing she was hoping not to cut was the amount of food she put in her child's lunchbox, and she wasn't. These are the real faces of bad decisions made by a bad government on cost of living.

Across the board, people are hurting and families are reeling from prices going up. The average Aussie has had their mortgage go up by $50,000. These government decisions have seen prices increase across the board. At the check-out aisles you are paying up to 12 per cent more. If you own your own house, you're paying 14 per cent more. If you are renting, guess what? It's worse. You're paying 17 per cent more. Electricity is up 32 per cent after the government subsidy. Gas is up 34 per cent. In Cook, my local electorate, unfortunately things are not looking good for my constituents, with 54.4 per cent of households saying they are financially stressed. If there is financial stress in Cook, there are parts of the rest of Australia that are doing it even tougher, w3ith 31.5 per cent of households experiencing mortgage stress and 83.4 per cent of those renting experiencing rental stress.

The employee living cost index gives us an idea of what's happening to Middle Australia, those who are being employed by others. It's up 19.4 per cent since Labor came to power. If you are a hardworking family out there, that is what you are paying more. That is almost 50 per cent more than what CPI has gone up. So CPI is not the right measure. If you're an employee out there slogging it out, you have had double the increase of what CPI tells you and that is how you know you are poorer. That's why Australian families feel so much poorer. That's why for the last 21 months Australia has been in a per capita recession. What does that technical economic jargon mean? It means, for two years, you and your family have been getting poorer. It means, for two years, the average disposable income you have has gone down. This is the first time in Australia's living history that that has ever happened over that period of time. That's under this Labor government's watch.

What have the Labor Party in government done to cause this? They've spent an additional $347 billion—$30,000 per household—since the election. I can tell you that the households of Cook do not feel $30,000 better off. They would have much preferred that $30,000 to go into their pockets, to have cost-of-living relief through lower taxes and less government spending. Over the past two years, these policies have seen Australia have the biggest fall in living standards in the developed world. Australia has gone from the top of the pack to the bottom of the pack. The Reserve Bank governor, Michele Bullock, has been under increasing pressure from this government and says the Treasurer is 'fully aware of the inflationary implications of his own policies'. The International Monetary Fund is projecting that in 2025 Australia will have the second-highest inflation in the developed world, the largest fall in disposable income in the developed world and the second-highest inflation, just after the Slovak Republic.

After 12 interest rates under Labor, we now have the highest interest rate since 2011. Respected economics firm Deloitte released figures showing Australia's standard of living will not recover until 2030. The damage wreaked by those on the other side has taken three years. It's going to take us six years just to get back on track. Australia has had enough.

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