Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I notice my esteemed colleague Senator Bilyk mentioned the wages record of the previous coalition government, but she failed to mention the wages record under her own government and probably for good reason. The reason for that is that real wages under this Labor government have declined at the fastest rate on record. That's why people are struggling out there. Today, real wages are back to levels we haven't seen since 2011.

Under this government, under the Labor government, people's standard of living in Australia has gone back more than a decade—that's 13 years ago. Primarily that is because this government has let inflation get out of control, and they have done nothing to actively seek to rein it in. We still have some of the highest inflation rates in the world right now, and it would appear that the inflation dragon is rearing its head again in other countries.

There are still many disruptions to supply chains, including the continuing situation in the Suez Canal. Oil prices are ticking up again. It is still very costly. Everyone can notice that at the petrol pump, and people's energy bills in this country have not declined by $275, like the government promised. In that context, with all of these issues, when inflation is still high and when people's real wages have been eroded back more than a decade, this government thinks the answer is to spend a week spending $6.75 billion. Over the past seven days this government has spent at a rate of almost a billion dollars a day. Where's the justification for it? The government had no defence or justification in question time for why they have been pump priming this already overheated economy and potentially making inflation worse.

There are things the government could do to help with inflation. They are difficult decisions and they require some degree of fortitude, but I want to highlight two fronts the government has almost completely lost control of at the moment that are making the inflation situation that much worse.

Firstly, on migration, we learned in the last couple of weeks that during the last financial year Australia brought in 518,000 people in one year—