Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier in my term, I did an interview with an ABC youth program called Canberra Bubble Tea!. They asked me to describe the Prime Minister in two or three words, and I said 'unintended consequences'. I was reflecting on this recently, in light of where Labor's policy agenda seems to be getting us, and my three words now are 'mugged by reality'.

My only experience in this place is in opposition, and I can understand the frustration of those who are now in government who spent all of those nine years in opposition developing their agendas. But, after almost a decade of plotting and scheming with the unions, they have fallen for the trap of implementing their agenda rather than governing for the times, and I think that they're misreading the national need.

I will just give you an idea of where I think we were after the pandemic. The pandemic was such a challenge. I wasn't in this place at the time, but many businesses in my electorate were extremely thankful to the federal government and the JobKeeper program and the actions led by then treasurer Frydenberg. That approach was validated, and I'll give you a quote from Brendan Coates, Housing and Economic Security Program director at the Grattan Institute. He described the recovery as:

… a macroeconomic success story, the result of unprecedented monetary policy—record low interest rates—and unprecedented fiscal policy—hundreds of billions of dollars of government spending to keep households and businesses afloat and simulate economic activity.

When we sit in the House of Representatives at the moment, we seem to get this chorus from the current government: '$1 trillion of coalition debt and nothing to show for it.' Well, I think we've got a lot to show for it. The previous government kept the economy going. In December 2021, the national accounts showed that the Australian economy had grown 3.4 per cent since the pandemic—more than the United States, the UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy and France.

But what I think we've seen since then, and particularly since the last election, is productivity falling off a cliff. There's a lot of debate in this place as to what's causing the inflation to remain unnecessarily high, with the resultant issues that people are having with cost of living and mortgage payments, but it's certainly got to do with government spending, and it's certainly got to do with productivity being affected. It's being affected by complex and uncompetitive industrial relations laws; higher input costs; wage inflation unconnected to productivity outcomes; environmental lawfare; and record migration that is untargeted and not addressing skills gaps, especially in regional Australia. Those are the principles of why it's not working. The examples of why it's not working are in water policy—and I've spoken many times in this place about the Murray-Darling Basin Plan—attacks on private sector industries that actually make us our money, pushing jobs and money unnecessarily high in the public sector, and not looking after the private sector.

The Albanese government are uniting the opposition against them. Tania Constable, from the Minerals Council of Australia, gave some scathing commentary about the government the other night at the Minerals Council dinner. Part of what she said is:

We do want cooperation. We don't want conflict. But under these new workplace laws, conflict has been brought upon us. It is a deliberate design feature of these laws.

Conflicts in IR laws in the mining industry are not going to deliver us productivity.

Innes Willox, chief executive of the national employer association, said:

We hope this reset allows the government to focus for the test of its term on delivering policy certainty and a stable environment that supports business productivity, investment and employment.

But I don't see that happening at the moment. I see an attack on productivity and an attack on the businesses that are making us our money. In my electorate, that's agriculture and food manufacturing, but in many other electorates it's mining and the resources sector.

I think the pathway to prosperity for Australians is a strong, competitive private sector, supported by the public sector, not having all the focus on the public sector. Of course we need a bureaucracy and of course we need public servants, but productivity, the success of the private sector and our ability to compete overseas are what is going to drive this economy forward and grow the economy. It's not happening at the moment, and I hope the policy settings change so that we can get there.