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

I too rise to speak on this matter of public importance. First of all, as I often have to do in this place, I have to set the record straight for those listening in the gallery or on the broadcast or reading the Hansard in a few days. Real wages increased under the last coalition government. You wouldn't know that if you just listened to what the Labor Party said, because they don't speak the truth. Real wages grew under the last coalition government, and real wages are plummeting under this Labor government. Real wages are plummeting, at a time when costs for families and businesses are skyrocketing. I could table information to show that this is a fact. It is a fact. It's in the ABS statistics. No-one can actually doubt what I am saying. But I don't need to table the information, because every family out there who is listening to this knows it. They know it when they get their pay cheque at the end of the two weeks. They know it when they go to the grocery store to buy the basket of groceries that used to cost them $200 and now costs them $250, if they're lucky. They know it when they go to the petrol station and fill up. Where they used to fill their tank to the brim, they now have to stop halfway because they have to watch their pennies. They know it when they see the money come out of their account every month or every two weeks on their mortgage repayments, which for an average mortgage holder in this country have gone up anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 a year.

So, when they hear the Labor Party trot out their trite lines about how they've done this, that and the other to assist with the cost of living, every Australian family listening knows that what they have done has done nothing to improve the lives and livelihoods of Australian families. It has done nothing to address the serious cost pressures that small business in this country is under. It has done nothing to alleviate the pain that so many families are feeling in having to make very tough decisions about whether to send their kids to the weekend sport, whether to think about that holiday over the Christmas period, whether they have to perhaps do more hours at work and miss out on time with their kids. These are the difficult decisions that Australian families are having to make.

I find it ironic. I looked back through the Hansardtranscript just before giving this speech. It is now 14 months ago—and I think my good friend Senator O'Sullivan was actually in the chamber at that time too—that I gave a speech, a little bit tongue in cheek, where I said, thinking back to that great television show The West Wing, that Labor had a secret plan to fight inflation. I think you were here for that speech, Senator O'Sullivan. That was 14 months ago, well over a year ago. 'A secret plan to fight inflation'—I said it a little bit tongue in cheek. I thought it was so secret because Labor weren't telling us what their plan was. And here we are 14 months later, and I think the Australian public would have every right to think that that plan is still secret, because they're not seeing it. They're not seeing any plan from this Labor government to tackle the very serious challenges that are facing Australian small businesses and Australian families every time they go to the grocery store, every time they go to fill up their car with petrol, every time they think about a little bit extra for their kids, every time they look at the basket of goods they're going to buy this week and think, 'What do we have to leave out?' These pressures are real. They're not something that those on this side have magically made up. These are real pressures on real Australians.

All governments need to be able to make tough decisions. That's what government is all about. But all this government seems to want to do is to look back to the past, to throw hand grenades across the chamber, to blame everything on the coalition, when in fact they've now delivered two budgets. They're the ones with their hands on the levers of power. They're the ones who have to make the tough decisions about expenditure—and they can't. They've shown that now. Two times, at least, the Reserve Bank have paused interest rate rises and looked at this government, looked at the settings in the economy, and said, 'Where are we going next? Do we raise interest rates or do we stay on hold?' And twice now—once with this government's last budget—the Reserve Bank have paused, waited and then raised interest rates.