Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Today we saw, yet again, a desperate attempt by the government to cling onto this fantasy they seem to have that they're good economic managers, when all of the economic indicators show that things are not doing what they said, before the election, they would be doing and that things are getting worse. This is a government, as I've said in this place a number of times, of broken promises. It promised the Australian people that they would receive a $275 reduction in their power bills. And the tragedy for the Australian people is that, when the $300 subsidy is gone, the higher power bills will remain.

This is a government that promised the Australian community higher real wages, yet, as we know, real wages are declining. This is a government that promised the Australian people they would have lower housing costs, yet in question time today, when the ministers were asked to indicate what the increases in costs were, they were unable to answer, so let's put the numbers on the record. Since this government came to office in May 2022, somebody with a $250,000 mortgage has had $1,940 added to their monthly mortgage costs. That's $24,000 a year.

When we asked how much real household disposable income had fallen on a per capita basis since the government was elected, again, the minister didn't want to answer the question. Do you wonder why, when the answer is 7.8 per cent and real household disposable income has fallen since this government was elected? This government promised Australians that they would make things better, yet things are going backwards, and they wonder why nobody in Australia believes them when they try to maintain the fantasy that they're good economic managers. Then, of course, when we asked how much a 14th interest rate hike might increase the monthly repayments on the average $750,000 mortgage, there was, again, no answer from the government. But, for the record, a 14.25 per cent interest rate would add another $123 per month to costs for a household with a $750,000 mortgage.

What we see continuously from the government is that, when we ask the hard questions, they don't want to answer. They try to deflect. They try to blame somebody else. We asked questions about the inflation rate and their commitment only a few weeks ago to, by the end of this year, see a two in front of it, yet, of course, the figures released yesterday show it going in the wrong direction again. It was Treasury's estimate, not the government's estimate, despite the Treasurer going out in the days before the budget was released to spruik all these numbers and talk about how they knew something special and say that they had special plans, which even the Reserve Bank didn't know about, that would be applied and would bring down inflation.

Of course, we all know now that the Reserve Bank, as they've told us on a number of occasions, have looked through those short-term measures, as they always do. We know that last year's budget didn't shift the dial, which the Reserve Bank told us at estimates. Therefore, the government wasn't doing what it claimed to be doing, which was assisting to bring down interest rates; it was leaving the Reserve Bank to do the heavy lifting. And now we're seeing exactly the same thing happening again this year. There is additional spending, additional capacity is going into the economy, inflation is going up, and now the Australian people face the spectre of another interest rate rise, all because of the complete mismanagement of the economy by this government. They should apologise to the Australian people for that mismanagement and those broken promises.