Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my good friend Senator Payne, who I've known a long time, for proposing this MPI. This is what the matter of public importance is: the need for the government to adopt a plan to ease pressure on cost of living for Australian families and small businesses now—not in October but to actually address the issue now, because we know that Australians are facing those cost-of-living pressures today. We know that because of the economic statement released last week and also the most recent inflation figures. Australia now has, for the year ending 30 June 2022, an annual inflation rate CPI of 6.1 per cent. This is the largest CPI rate since the Australian government introduced the goods and services tax. Even if you take out some of the outliers in terms of the inflationary pressures and trim it down, the trimmed mean inflation rate is 4.9 per cent. Even if you take down the factors which are pulling that inflation rate up to 6.1 per cent, and maybe on the other side pulling it down—so you take the trimmed mean inflation rate—it's at 4.9 per cent. That's the highest level since that particular measurement was actually used from 2003—so the highest level in nearly 20 years. The forecasts are even more grim. The Treasury forecast is that by the end of the year Australia will be facing an inflation rate of 7.75 per cent; that's the forecast for the end of the year.

Australia is crying out for a government that has a positive plan that will actually counter these inflationary pressures, and we simply do not have it. In fact, we have the contrary. At a point in time when Australia is facing these inflationary cost pressures, what is the obsession of those opposite? The obsession of those opposite is with the Australian Building and Construction Commission—gutting the powers of the ABCC and then ultimately seeking, when they take the time to actually present legislation to this place, to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. That will actually feed into inflation, and you don't need to believe me; you can look at an independent report that was put out by Ernst & Young. The ABCC is the cop on the beat at our construction sites around Australia. And the work they do is incredibly important in terms of keeping those construction costs down for our schools, for our roads, for our hospitals and for our important social infrastructure. The result of abolishing the ABCC would be to increase those construction costs.

I quote from a study released by Ernst & Young in relation to their economy-wide modelling, in relation to the impact of abolishing the ABCC:

Key economic costs indicated by the modelling involve:

Why would you introduce that sort of policy in a high inflation environment? What is the sense of it, apart from providing a sop to the CFMMEU? There's no sense to it in this environment. It's entirely the wrong thing to do if you want to take those cost pressures off the Australian economy.

Ernst & Young says:

Overall economic activity—

as a result of Labor's policy—

could decline by $47.5 billion by 2030 as higher costs and lower productivity act as a handbrake on other sectors.

So those costs that will increase through the construction industry, as a result of the Labor government's policy to abolish the ABCC, will infect all sorts of sectors across the whole of the Australian economy. It goes on:

If the ABCC were abolished—

and that is what the Australian government's—the current government, Albanese's government—intention is—

this could lead to a total economic loss of around $47.5 billion, compared to baseline estimates, to 2030.

'Employment and labour costs impacts'—Ernst & Young go on:

The construction industry is one of the largest employers in Australia, employing almost 1.15 million people. The industry also directly supports jobs in other Australian industries such as timber, steel, and cement manufacturing.

…   …   …

Modelling suggests that abolishing the ABCC could cost the Australian economy up to 4,000 jobs. Job losses are felt immediately as output in the construction industry falls and labour costs rise.

Then there's the fiscal cost, when every school, every hospital, every road project, is going to cost an estimated 30 per cent more because of the lawless behaviour of the construction division of the CFMMEU, whose representatives sit around the Labor Party's national executive. And as a result of those costs—