Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday, the Treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers, gave himself a pat on the back for the government's work in combating inflation and taking credit for the pause in the lifting of interest rates. The Treasurer said he welcomed the progress that the government was making in combating inflation. In doing so, though, the Treasurer has ignored two very, very important points.

The first point is the accumulative impact of 11 rate rises in this country since Labor was elected to government. That is rate rise upon rate rise 11 times, and the cumulative effect of that is that Australian families are now having to find more and more money from their budgets to support mortgage rate increases. So the pause in the lifting of interest rates above 4.1 per cent is relief for those families, who are having to find extra money to support those 11 rate rises. It is not a holiday for them. It is not a holiday for them.

The second matter that the Treasurer has chosen to ignore is the release today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics of its latest data with regard to what they call the selective cost-of-living index. The select cost-of-living index released by the ABS today provides a more granular analysis of the impact of inflation on the Australian economy. It was a revealing what the ABS released today in that selected cost-of-living index, and it is revealing because what that index does is provides to parliamentarians, like me, and others in the community a detailed insight into the inflationary impact on a pensioner, on a family, on a retiree.

What did the ABS say today? The ABS said this morning, when it released the index, that all five living cost indexes rose between 6.3 per cent and 9.6 per cent over 12 months to June this year. If you listen closely to Dr Chalmers, the Treasurer, and to other Labor members of parliament, you would have thought that price rises were no longer happening in this country. Well, the ABS has absolutely refuted that today. Price rises have been happening in this country for the last 12 months, and they are in the order of 6.3 to 9.6 per cent. That means the price of things for Australians, under Labor, has risen between 6.3 and 9.6 per cent over the last 12 months.

What else did it say? It said that one particular group of people in this country have recorded the strongest annual rises on record—not my words; this is quoted from the ABS this morning. Employee households have recorded the strongest annual rises on record. That is the welcome progress that Jim Chalmers talked about the other day.

Australian families are hurting, and it's worth remembering that, when we consider what has happened to interest rates in this country, we remember these three important figures: 880,000 loans this year alone will shift from fixed to variable rates. That means those loans—880,000 this year—will be impacted by those 11 rate rises under Labor. But more than that, the 590,000 fixed loans that shifted to variable rate loans last year will also be impacted by Labor's interest rate rises; and, at a minimum, the 450,000 fixed rates that will transfer to variable rates next year will be impacted by those 11 rate rises. Jim Chalmers and Labor engaged in a vanity project by announcing their 'wellbeing budget'. (Time expired)