Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's always a pleasure to rise in this place and speak on an appropriation bill. These bills necessarily provide appropriations for the continued delivery of government services and to fund the decisions in the 2024-25 budget. In total, these bills appropriate some $12 billion for the remainder of the financial year, the majority of which, some $7 billion, is directed to ordinary annual services of government. Now, of course the coalition supports these bills to ensure the smooth operation of government and the uninterrupted provision of services that Australians rely on.

However, while we support the bills as a matter of necessity, we must also use this opportunity to highlight the grave economic mismanagement that has led us to this point, that sees Australians right across the country, not just in households but in small businesses, under increasing pressures, both through cost of living and cost of doing business. There is nothing this government can do to hide their economic mismanagement. They appear to have tries every trick in the book with little, if any, success because they simply don't understand how a market economy works, because none of them over there have worked in the private sector, or very few. It is why we have seen inflation far too high for far too long under their management.

Now, much of their increased spending is through the increase of ordinary government services; I accept that. But there are many parts of their additional spending which could have been much more carefully thought through given the inflationary impacts of the spending and the consequent impact on Australian households. In real terms, we have seen Australian households go back by the best part of nine per cent, an extraordinary number that Australians alive today, most of whom would never have seen their standard of living fall by over nine per cent in three years, let alone a longer period of time. The evidence continues to mount, as we see this government's failure to deal with these fundamental issues of higher prices, higher interest rates, more small business collapses, and lower living standards.

So let's go through a little bit of the track record of those opposite for the benefit of the House. I'm sure my learned colleagues here contributing to this debate will repeat these statistics for the benefit of all concerned: health up over 10 per cent; education costs up 11 per cent; food costs up 12 per cent; housing costs up 14 per cent; rents up 17 per cent; insurance and financial services, 18 per cent; electricity, 32 per cent; and gas up 34 per cent. That's a pretty damning report card on the government's progress over the past nearly three years. As I said, they can dress this up any way they want, but those figures tell a story. I can say that, despite the government's rhetoric about lowering the cost of living and making things easier, when I talk to people in my mobile offices or when I'm out about in community, they're not seeing grocery prices in their shopping baskets going down. They're only going up.

One of the key drivers of cost of living is energy, because energy is in every single thing that we do. You need energy to make the petrol pumps work to put petrol in your car or to put diesel in your truck or ute. You need energy to run the cold rooms in your supermarkets, big warehouses, pub or cafe. Last week, we saw with the businesses that run the big warehouses to distribute food to our supermarkets that some of the cost increases for their electricity bills were up by 200 per cent or more. I know businesses in my electorate whose gas bills haven't gone up by 34 per cent but by 50, 60 or 100 per cent, and they're now talking about closing their businesses. These are businesses that are at the leading edge of innovation in their particular industry in this country.

The government's not interested in them. It's not interested in their struggles. They are interested in all the fancy stuff like Quantum AI. They are happy to hand over a billion dollars with no questions asked to a quantum AI company, yet a company that manufacturers leading-edge textiles in my electorate and, by the way, supplies our Defence Force is at risk of going out of business because the cost of gas has gone up by nearly 100 per cent for them. These are the everyday stories that those opposite have no idea about and no desire to deal with.

It's not going to get better; it's only going to get worse, because the impact of all of these increases accumulates over time. As the previous speaker, the member for Hughes, quite rightly outlined, Australian households are now spending or have spent an extra $50,000 on interest costs on their mortgage because of 12 interest rate rises. That's $50,000 they are no longer spending in the retail shop at the local shopping centre or at a local cafe or club, or maybe they've pulled their kids out of sport because they can't afford to pay the registration fees. Thankfully, the Crisafulli government in Queensland has brought forward the release of the Get in the Game grants to enable families to afford the registration for their kids. I thank them for that. All of these things have an impact on social cohesion and family harmony because of those financial pressures.

So far we've seen some 27,000 businesses go insolvent under this government's lack of leadership. I'll say, with no degree of hesitation, that that number will only continue to grow. What are they doing for small business? We've had a bill go through the House which removes the interest deductibility for a tax debt. We're seeing before this House a proposal to increase the cost of vehicles through making the emissions standards much tougher. We're seeing for maybe some larger businesses and others—I know some business people who were clients of mine in my former life who had business assets in self-managed super funds, and we know many in the agricultural sector have many of their assets in superannuation funds and, rest assured, those funds will be worth way more than $3 million—that this government wants to introduce an unrealised capital gains tax. It would be the first time anywhere in the world that a government introduces an unrealised capital gains tax. What's going to happen to those businesses? If they don't have the cash in their super fund, will they have to sell the asset that they are operating their business from? Does this government actually care about that? Quite evidently, it doesn't. How many people are potentially going to lose their job as a result of that? I can rest assured that the government did no regulatory impact statement whatsoever to assess that risk—zero. So, despite everything this government says, it is doing the opposite of what it says it will do. I've said many times in this place and outside of here: you don't listen to what a Labor government says it's doing; you look at what it does because nine times out of 10 they are two completely and utterly different things. That's exactly what we're seeing from those opposite.

We are in a sustained household recession. We are seeing negligible productivity growth, and that proposition is only made worse by the introduction of broad-ranging increased IR laws that the government has introduced at the behest of the unions. We're seeing more red tape and more regulation in the IR sector that makes it even less attractive for businesses to employ people.

The Prime Minister tries to run the line that we should trust him. As I said before, on the evidence of his track record there's absolutely no reason to trust what he says. And if we have a look at the employee living cost index, which is an index measuring the true cost of living for hardworking Australian families, that cost-of-living index has risen by 19.4 per cent since Labor took government. That's almost 50 per cent higher than the CPI over the same period.

The reason the government can say they've run two budget surpluses is by no dint of credit to their budget management; it's courtesy of the very industries and businesses they're attacking and seek to want to remove from our economy. We've seen a 66 per cent increase in the number of people seeking assistance for their energy bills. We know that people are struggling to keep the lights on. As I said earlier, small businesses are closing their doors at an alarming rate, and yet we have a proposal from the coalition government to assist small business by giving them the incentive to take their staff out for lunch or dinner—this will support our local cafes and clubs and pubs, and every business I've spoken to thinks it's a terrific policy—as a reward for their hard work and effort and yet those opposite are demonising it. Yet at the big end of town—those opposite are quite happy to put their knees under boardroom tables and get donations from the big end of town—can claim that as a tax deduction. It's the height of hypocrisy from those opposite to say they support small business and workers. They don't by their very words and by their very actions.

We saw a revelation late last week of another $11.1 billion blackhole in Labor's budget. What else are we going to find as we keep going through the books, because, rest assured, that $11 billion is just the start.

There is an alternative at this election that's coming up. It is a coalition government. We are focused on strengthening our economy and getting our country back on track. We'll look to lower inflation. We'll look to rein in wasteful spending that fuels that inflation by reducing taxes, reducing red tape and reducing out-of-control union bosses getting stuck into small business. We'll make energy cheaper by ensuring a balanced mix, including more renewables, more gas and replacing retiring coal plants with zero emissions nuclear energy. We'll make homes affordable by funding critical infrastructure required for housing, helping first home buyers, restricting foreign investors and restoring a sensible migration intake. We're looking at supporting safer communities and getting tough on violent crime by non-citizens, boosting our defence and border protection and improving online safety for children. There will be quality healthcare, funded by more GPs, increased bulk-billing rates and more Medicare subsidised services.

On that particular note of subsidised Medicare services, I note with interest that the minister for health over the last few days has been waxing lyrical about their success in bulk-billing. I might remind the House that in 2019—before COVID, so it is on a level playing field—bulk-billing rates in my electorate were 96 per cent. What are they today? They are 84 per cent. That is a 12 per cent drop in bulk-billing rates. The minister for health, along with all of his other frontbench colleagues and those on the backbench, are so busy spruiking the successes of this government. Once again, look at what they actually do and what they achieve, not what they say, because they're not a true representation of what's happening. Only a coalition government will get Australia back on track.

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