Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Each time we arrive here in Canberra and we come into question time, most particularly, we see a very self-satisfied prime minister and a very self-satisfied government over there, all backslapping and laughing and lecturing us in the opposition about how things are going so well and about our audacity in asking questions of this government. But the failures and endless lists of broken promises from this government have pushed so many Australians, many in my electorate as well, into a very dire situation.

Our economy is crumbling under the weight of Labor's ongoing poor decisions and mismanagement. Sadly, since the election, in just over two years, Australians are now poorer, because of this Labor government, than they were two years ago. Under Labor's watch and failed economic policies, we know inflation and interest rates will remain higher for longer. This is according to the Reserve Bank. More than two years into this disastrous government's term and after three terrible budgets, we're losing, as Australians, the economic battle on two fronts: persistent homegrown inflation and an economy that's quite frankly grinding to a halt. We see that every day with businesses going into administration and liquidation and now, increasingly, with people being made redundant and losing their jobs.

We find ourselves at the back of the pack when it comes to fighting inflation. Since December, Australia has been the only country to see an increase in inflation, which now exceeds 10 per cent, with interest rates also rising 12 times under Labor. Households are in recession, with no growth in GDP per capita for over a year—for five consecutive quarters. These are very grim economic times being faced by Australians, and sadly there are even further grim economic times ahead.

Labor's energy policies have been another absolute failure. Despite the Prime Minister promising on 97 occasions before the election that he would reduce household energy bills by $275 a year, Australians are now paying some of the highest energy prices in the world. Yesterday, in fact, I met with a building company who employs many hundreds of Australians who told me that their monthly energy bill in their manufacturing business, for building products, increased from $15,000 a month two years ago to $50,000 a month just two years later. The owner said to me, 'Michael, that increase just gets passed on into the products we sell, which ultimately get passed on to the Australians who buy those homes at the end.' In housing, one of my portfolio areas, we just see one disaster after another.

It's remarkable that, at a time when we're building fewer homes than we've built for over a decade, when we have fewer homes being approved to be built and when we have record lows of first home buyers—with all that happening—Labor has decided to run their secretive 'big Australia' policy, which we know they've wanted to do every time they have gotten into government. There have been more than a million new migrants in that two-year period of this government, yet we're building fewer homes than ever. There are a million more migrants and about 260,000 new homes. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that that is the cause of so many of the issues we're seeing in housing. Rents are up by 22 per cent. No wonder you go to an open inspection for a rental property in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane and sometimes you find lines around the block, because people are so desperate to find a home. A million new migrants when you're not building homes is one of the most irresponsible things that you can do as a government. An Australian government's primary role is to make the life of our citizens easier. This government is making Australians' lives harder, and they shouldn't come to Canberra laughing and giggling and patting each other on the back when they're inflicting so much pain on everyday Australians.