Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

There's more! We have not one but two opportunities. I thought, 'I haven't made a contribution in relation to financial services regulation reform,' as I was wandering past the Senate chamber door and I heard that phrase. I thought I might have an opportunity to have a few things to say about it, and I took that opportunity in the last debate. I was delighted to have an opportunity to participate in that. I find that there is another opportunity with another important piece of reform that the Albanese Labor government has scheduled here for the Senate's consideration to make a contribution in this important area of financial services reform. I would be delighted to find out there were a third and fourth over the course of today or this week; that would be absolutely terrific.

I listened carefully to Senator Hume's contribution. There's a silver lining in every cloud, isn't there? The silver lining is that the coalition has indicated they are going to support this important piece of reform. The cloud is the balance of the contribution, which demonstrates the incapacity of the Liberal and National parties to learn the lessons from the last election. Australians are looking for government to act in an adult way, in the national interest, in their interests whether it is drier areas of financial services reform like this or in other matters. But what we got instead from Senator Hume in the coalition's contribution was a sort of spray of allegations about the performance of this government in this area, about high inflation and the high cost of living, questions which of course the Morrison government paid no attention to—declining productivity, the worst period of productivity growth.

Sensible competition law reform, sensible financial services reforms are not insignificant contributors to productivity. But after the worst decade on record in productivity growth, those opposite have no regard to these issues now. It is all finger-pointing and fingerpainting their set of issues. They can't be taken seriously if they don't engage with their own economic failure in office and the position they have left Australia in.

I heard a young person in my home suburb refer to the 'cozzy livs'. Apparently, that is what the young people call the cost of living. It has become such a big issue for Australian families that it has found its way into the popular culture for young people as well. Moving on from the desultory decade of failure of those opposite over the cost of living, supply chain pressures, productivity and energy policy, all of these things are making it harder for Australian families, Australian households, Australian industry and the Australian economy to adjust to the high cost of living and increase in the cost of living.

Senator Hume then reflected in an extraordinary way on the fiscal position of this government. This government, the Albanese government, in its second budget in May delivered a surplus. I remember the 'back in black' smugness of the previous government when it came to claiming an illusory surplus that they never delivered. I remember it well because Senator Hume and former Senator Cormann and all these characters were out with their 'back in black' mugs. The music didn't quite fit—they glossed over the way 'back in black' didn't quite bang in the way the song 'Back in Black' does—but they produced mugs. I remember the mugs well because I've got 12 of them. I want to say very clearly, because I'm sure the organisational wing of the Labor Party is listening, I didn't buy them from the Liberal Party of Australia. They were available on their website. You could see them there; they were available. Liberal Party branch members, I'm sure, were buying them. They're not bringing them out for afternoon teas now. They're in the bin, in the back cupboard or being used to prop up the cat box or whatever else. I had them made. I want to assure senators that no profit for the Liberal Party of Australia was engaged in my purchase of these mugs. There was a Reject Shop in Redfern that made up mugs—any old mugs—and it made up these mugs.

I've got the mugs in my office as a lasting memorial to the gap between Liberal Party promises, Liberal Party slogans, Liberal Party fantasies and delivery. As it always turns out, during a period of being too long in office they trashed opportunities in financial services reform—a subject I want to keep coming back to, the subject of this important piece of legislation—malingered in other areas of economic reform and went missing in energy policy, where their signature achievement, apart from a decade of complete chaos and desultory hopelessness, was to remove four gigawatts of capacity from the system and put only one back in. They are the biggest driver of high energy and electricity prices in the Australian economy today, which is why the then energy minister, now the shadow Treasurer, Mr Taylor, hid from the Australian people in the lead-up to the election, in a less than honest way, the upcoming electricity price rises that Australian consumers could expect as a result of the Morrison government's, the Turnbull government's and the Abbott government's hopeless failures in energy policy.