Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a government addicted to spin. We saw over the weekend Treasurer Jim Chalmers out and about backgrounding media—crowing, in fact—about wage increases. Australians have never had it so good, according to this Labor government. Let's look a little bit deeper because every Australian out there knows that that's not the reality of their lives. Treasurer Jim Chalmers is out there crowing about $10 more per day in the average earner's pay packet, but what has happened to your mortgage? The average Australian mortgage has gone up by more than $1,000 a month. Do the maths. That's in excess of $33 per day. The average grocery bill for an average family has gone up by at least that $10 a day. Fuel has gone up. Electricity has gone up. Every Australian knows this and every Australian family knows this. Real wages are not going up; they're going backwards under this Labor government because it doesn't know how to control inflation.

For comparison let's look around the world. In Argentina, wages—not real wages—have just gone up by 26 per cent. Doesn't that sound good for the workers in Argentina? Gosh. I bet Jim Chalmers would love to claim that 26 per cent wage increase. But that's on the back of the 100 per cent inflation rate. Those workers are going backwards, and that's exactly what's happening in Australia. Labor is spinning, spinning, spinning.