James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This afternoon we heard the rather sad but unsurprising news that the Reserve Bank has had to increase interest rates on Australian families for the 12th time. That is the 12th time since the Albanese Labor government came to power. This would have to be some kind of record but not a very good one. Do you know how many times the Reserve Bank increased interest rates under Scott Morrison and the former coalition government? Just once. The Reserve Bank met 96 times when the former coalition government was in power, and interest rates went up once. In the first 18 months of this Albanese government, the Reserve Bank has met 17 times, and interest rates have been increased on 12 of those occasions. Indeed, you could say that, under Labor, interest rates are 12 times more likely to go up than they are under the coalition. The last time interest rates were this high was during the last Labor government, in the middle of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd saga of 2011, when interest rates were, again—you guessed it!—out of control.

The Labor Party have demonstrated time and time again that they have a complete inability to manage their economy, and Australians are hurting because of it. In the last 15 months, the costs of your average Australian family's bills have gone up 7.3 per cent. Housing costs have gone up 10.4 per cent. The cost of electricity is up 18.2 per cent. The cost of food is up 8.2 per cent. The cost of gas is up a staggering 28 per cent. The cost of insurance is up 17.3 per cent. These aren't just statistics. These aren't just figures. These are the bills that Australian families are struggling to pay at the moment. The Labor Party go around parading that wages have increased by 3.6 per cent. Well, I've got news for the Labor Party. It doesn't matter if wages have gone up 3.6 per cent if the cost of everything is increasing twice as fast. And it is only going to get worse. The Labor government have had this year to try and get prices under control. This was Australia's opportunity to act. This was Australia's opportunity to help Australian families. But Labor has failed. Now we are witnessing growing conflict in the Middle East. We are witnessing major advanced economies start to shift closer to recessions. We are witnessing China approaching its slowest rate of economic growth since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are witnessing an evermore unstable global environment, and Australian prices are going to go higher because this Labor government has not been able to get them under control.

In the last three months, housing has gone up 2.2 per cent, transport has gone up 3.2 per cent, and communication costs have gone up 2.2 per cent. But there is hope. The government can act to get inflation under control, but only if it has the political will. This inflation is not coming from Ukraine. It's not coming from Washington. It's not coming from the Middle East. It is coming from Canberra—plain and simple. This government can act. The government can allow domestic airline competition to reduce transportation costs. The government can work with states and territories to free up more land for housing development. The government can reduce the $188 billion in additional spending it has committed since elected. The government can stand up to the unions and tell them that they are taking industrial relations back to the 1970s and that it may not be the best idea in a cost-of-living crisis. But will they? All the evidence appears to the contrary.

We can fight inflation in this country, but only with a coalition government, because this Labor government has shown time and time again it just doesn't have the ticker for it. What we've seen over the last few months has been a Labor government focused on the politics of division, focused on a $450 million referendum and focused on spending money to help Canberra, rather than talking about costs of living.

I challenge the journalists in this building to research how many times Labor ministers said 'cost of living' before 14 October. I guarantee that it will yield a nil search.

That is the issue with this government: they're driven by focus groups and they're driven by polling. They have lost the referendum and now they're having a panic about what Australian people care about. I can tell them this, and anybody on this side can tell them this: the No. 1 issue in Australia for the last year has been the cost of living, and it has not been helped by this Labor government. They are making the cost-of-living crisis worse because they are not getting inflation under control.