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

What did we hear from the Treasurer yesterday? We heard, 'I did my bit.' You have to ask yourself where Dr Chalmers got his degree from. You have to wonder whether it was the 'Uri Geller Institute of Advanced Spoon Bending'! I think that's where he might have got his doctorate from. We've had the finance minister stand up in this place and the Treasurer stand up in the other place and talk about how their budget is putting downward pressure on inflation. No economist that I have seen has actually agreed with them because it is against every principle of economic theory that a big-spending budget like this could in any way, shape or form put downward pressure on inflation. Chris Richardson, a highly respected economist, described it as 'poking the inflation bear'. Alan Kohler, who is certainly no hard right-wing economist, writes for the New Daily. He talked about how the electricity rebates in particular were inflationary in their effect and how the budget overall was inflationary in its effect.

What is in this budget is some big-spending slogans—I won't call them policies because I don't think there's much policy behind them. They are slogans. You couldn't make this stuff up: 'Future Made in Australia'. It's straight out of The Hollowmen or Utopia. And the biggest joke, which is a joke on the taxpayers of Australia, is that the first billion dollars of Future Made in Australia goes to a United States company, so Future Made in Australia has a very American tinge to it. Only Labor could come up with tax cuts that actually increase tax revenue over 10 years—tax cuts that add $28 billion of tax revenue to their coffers over the next 10 years. Only the Labor Party could come up with that.

This is a budget that ignores Middle Australia. It ignores all of Australia, but it particularly ignores the vast bulk of Australians who are feeling an extraordinary pressure on their household budgets and on their small businesses. They've seen their costs skyrocket, whether it's the cost of inputs for a small business or the cost of buying the groceries and filling up the car for a household. They've seen those costs just go through the roof over the period of this government. At the time same time, they've seen their interest rates and their interest rate repayments also go through the roof. For a typical household, it's anywhere north of $15,000 a year in annual interest repayment increases.

These are real people. This is real money. This is a government that has not got a clue on either how to put downward pressure on interest rates or how to help those struggling families out there who are doing it really tough. We talk to them every day. We hear the stories of people having to make hard decisions about whether they're going to cancel their kids' sport this year, whether they're going to decide to wind back on outings with their family, whether they're going to be able to employ that extra person at the cafe, whether they're going to have to put off the last person they hired at the local supermarket or whether they're going to have to think again about taking on that apprentice or that trainee. These are the stories we hear every day.

For those opposite to come into this place and make the completely unfounded claim—a claim contradicted by literally every economist who has been out there on the budget—that this budget in some way puts downward pressure on interest rates is just a nonsense. (Time expired)