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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Trade and Tourism (Senator Farrell) to questions without notice asked by Senator Scarr and Senator Hume today relating to interest rates.

We saw at the end of question time that the acting Leader of the Government in the Senate—and I think we're all going to be very relieved when Senator Wong returns—was completely unable to give Australians any reassurance that this Labor government has a clue about how to deal with the inflation and cost-of-living crisis that is facing families, small businesses and medium-sized businesses right across Australia. In fact, the modus operandi of those opposite seems to be that a lie told often enough becomes the truth. This is a quote attributed to Vladimir Lenin—perhaps not surprisingly, someone from the Left—but it actually predates Vladimir Lenin.

But there is a truth to it in relation to the way that this government is operating. They want to blame the previous government for interest rate rises, all of which—bar one—have been under their watch. They've delivered two budgets since gaining office, and it is their economic settings that the RBA look at when they decide whether or not to raise interest rates. We've seen this pattern a couple of times now. The RBA paused interest rate rises before the government handed down the last budget. The RBA said, 'We're going to pause, wait, look at the government's budget and decide what to do.' They waited a month and then they raised interest rates. Then they paused again, waited, and watched this government and what they were doing in relation to their own balance sheet to address the inflationary issues in our economy. And the RBA has raised interest rates again today.

That hits Australian families hard and that hits small businesses extraordinarily hard. They're facing cost pressures from so many directions. It's not just from the interest rate rises on their borrowings—whether that be a mortgage or a small business loan—but also from cost-of-living pressures from their suppliers and when they're going down to the shops, buying the groceries, filling up their car at the petrol station and paying their electricity bills. A lie told often enough can turn into the truth. The Labor Party keeps saying electricity prices are coming down; it's simply not true—