Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I say to Senator Roberts: you don't have a monopoly on guts. We've got a bit of guts over here, too, Senator Roberts.

I congratulate Senator McGrath in relation to this matter of public importance. My colleague from Queensland is absolutely right, as he often is, in bringing forward this MPI:

Instead of blaming global uncertainty for higher-than-expected inflation figures, it is clear that rising domestic costs for housing, electricity and groceries demonstrate Australia's inflation problems are now home-grown and the Albanese Labor Government has no plan to make it any easier for Australian households and businesses.

You don't have to listen to politicians' opinions with respect to this MPI to know that what Senator McGrath is saying is absolutely correct. Let me give you three examples.

First, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Michele Bullock made a statement in relation to this in her speech at the Australian Business Economists annual dinner on 22 November 2023. You can find this online. If someone says, 'Senator Scarr has taken it out of context,' or 'He's done this or done the other,' you can read her speech online. This is what she said:

… I would like to focus on one particular consideration for policy: that the remaining inflation challenge we are dealing with is increasingly homegrown …

'Increasingly homegrown': those are the words of Ms Michele Bullock, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, no less. She gives three pieces of evidence to back up her opinion. The first signal is that inflation is broadly based. That's her first piece of evidence. The second indicator that inflation is being driven by domestic demand is that it is increasingly underpinned by services. Her third piece of evidence—the third signal—is the continuation of limited spare capacity, most evident in high rates of labour utilisation. That leads to her conclusion—it's not my conclusion. It's the conclusion of the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia:

An important implication of this homegrown and demand-driven component to inflation is that getting inflation back to target will take time.

They're the words of the Reserve Bank governor of Australia.

The second piece of analysis I want to give you is, again, not the words of a politician. This analysis was by Michael Reed of the AFR, based on OECD data. This OECD data demonstrates that real household gross disposable income per capita—that's the amount of money Australians have in their pockets to pay for the goods and services that they need—the annual change to 30 June 2023 was minus 5.1 per cent in Australia. It was the worst in the whole of the OECD. No-one did worse. We did the worst. Do you get a gold medal for being the worst? I'm not sure, but we would have won it. Norway, minus 4.4; Sweden, minus 3.3; and Italy, minus 1.5: they all did better than us. Then there were those in positive territory: Hungary, 0.1; France, 1.6; UK, 2.2; US, 3.5; Chile, 5.6; and Spain, 6.0 per cent. So, in that 12-month period, Spain managed to achieve an increase in real household gross disposable income per capita of six per cent, while we achieved minus 5.1 per cent—the bottom of the OECD. Congratulations, Albanese government—the bottom of the OECD in the first 12 months of the Albanese Labor government. Minus 5.1 per cent: that's the result you got. I didn't make up those figures. Those are OECD figures. It's a damning result. It's a damning indictment of the performance of the Albanese Labor government.

There is a third piece of evidence that I will refer to. I've referred to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, I've referred to objective OECD data and now I'm going to refer to the canary in the coalmine, the Salvation Army, in relation to what they're saying in the lead-up to their Christmas appeal:

'People are at breaking point—and it hurts.'

Andrew said the survey also found that for those who do reach out to a charity this Christmas, almost half … will be doing so for the first time. This means that supporting the Salvos' Christmas Appeal is more important than ever.

And it is indeed.