Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Chalmers is spending $14 billion in this year—a cumulative total in new decisions taken in the most recent budget of $42 billion. So the government is running at least a neutral—or perhaps an expansionary—fiscal position. The budget papers tell us that, and the Reserve Bank has underlined that with its statements to the Senate last week. Why is this the case? I believe this is the case because, no matter how well intentioned the government may be, the government is unable to say no to its favourite vested interest. It's unable to turn off the spending tap, and it's been unable to stop delivering policy only for their fellow travellers and the rent-seekers and the bloodsuckers that run the Labor Party's preselections and man their polling places. The policy support that the vested interests of the unions and super funds get is backed up by the Commonwealth budget, because the Commonwealth budget is engineered to support their vested interests.

Unfortunately, the people paying the price for Labor's inability to say no are the mortgage holders. Around one-third of Australians have got a mortgage, and these people are paying the price. We are not headed in the right direction here. It's all about the trajectory. If the budget position were contractionary, then you could imagine that the Reserve Bank would be able to stop what it's doing. But I believe that, sadly, the Reserve Bank is going to be forced to continue to increase rates because the Commonwealth government is sticking more and more money into the economy because it can't say no to the unions and all the other bloodsuckers and rent-seekers that are part of the modern Australian Labor Party's movement. The reality is that we are stuck with having stubbornly high inflation. While our competitors around the world are able to manage inflation, we are stuck in the lane of having persistently high inflation, which is going to hurt all mortgage holders in Australia.