Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer had his big night last night. If you think we're disappointed by this budget, you can't imagine the disappointment the Australian people and, indeed, those in my home state of Western Australia must be feeling. All this budget told those in Western Australia is that there will be much more financial hurt and pain for their household budgets.

Be in no doubt: we are in a cost-of-living crisis. Things are going to get a lot worse before they're going to get better. The cost of living is going up. Power prices are going up. Gas prices are going up. Taxes are going up. Western Australians will have to spend more in their budgets just to be able to make ends meet.

One reliable way of putting downward pressure on inflation is to put a limit on spending, but this budget contains measures that are actually going to put upward pressure on inflation. Let me give you an example. We've got $4.5 billion in here for so-called cheaper child care. That sounds noble, but we know, by this government's own admission, that this policy will not add a single childcare place. Worse still, it's likely to drive up the cost of child care. The increased subsidy will be swallowed up and will have further inflationary impacts. On the issue of no extra places, can someone from the Labor Party please explain to someone that's living in a childcare desert how an increased subsidy is going to help their costs of living if they can't actually access a childcare place in the first place?

Despite ruling it out before the election, what we've seen is that the retiree tax is back. Labor's sneaky new tax will slug people who invest their own savings in superannuation, people who have worked hard and saved for a better retirement. Labor will now hit retirees and investors with a new $555 million tax, depriving investors of franking credits which they had previously relied on.

This government has been in power for just five months. In that time, we've seen interest rates rise for five consecutive months. That's an increase of 2.25 per cent in five months, the most rapid increase in nearly three decades. Inflation is out of control. Before the last election, the then opposition leader repeatedly told Australians that Labor would cut power prices for families and small businesses by $275. Despite the Treasurer telling the National Press Club today that it was in the budget, Labor have not included it. It's a broken promise.

When Australians think that it couldn't get much worse under this government, now this government turns around and slashes funding for rural and regional Australia with the abolition of the coalition's Building Better Regions Fund, the BBRF. This is a great program which supported Australians living in non-metropolitan regions. It highlights that this government is completely city-centric. It's very clear that this budget is all about helping the re-election campaign of the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews. In the electorate of O'Connor in Western Australia, there were 20 BBRF round 6 applications, two of which were from the Shire of Katanning to facilitate an early childhood hub and one of which was from the Shire of Laverton to facilitate an upgrade of the airport at Laverton. These are the kinds of important projects that are needed by these local communities, which will now miss out because of Labor's poor treatment of regional Western Australia.

Last night's budget was a missed opportunity. It further underlined that this government is very good at talking but slow on taking responsibility and slow on bringing forward a plan to make life better for those in Western Australia. They're not providing for our communities. There is real pain in this budget. Have no doubt about that. Western Australian families know this year's Christmas will be very different to previous years. Instead, this government is too busy rewriting history books and blaming everyone else for the job that they have been elected to do.