Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

In June 2022, now minister Tony Burke told the Australian people, with a straight face:

People will be seeing in theirhttps://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;adv=yes;orderBy=date-eFirst;page=0;query=%22in%20their%20bank%20accounts%22%20Dataset%3Ahansardr,hansardr80,hansardrIndex,hansards,hansards80,hansardsIndex,reportjnt,reportsen,reportrep,estimate,comSen,comJoint,comRep;rec=23;resCount=Default—HIT3 bank accounts what the change of government means. People will be seeing in their bank accounts a wage increase …

In April 2022, the then opposition leader laid it down. He said, and I'll say this very clearly, 'They'—and he was referring to Australians—'will be better off under a Labor government than they will be under a Morrison government.' Two years later we can see absolutely how hollow these promises have been. Australians on every measure are worse off under a Labor government. That isn't an opinion; that's fact.

Just today we saw the wage price index released, and again there was another quarter of real wages going backwards. In fact, real wages have gone backwards by nine per cent since Labor came to government. Just in my home state of Victoria, which has been economically so mismanaged by the Andrews and now Allan governments for years and years now, the ultimate canary in the coalmine for economic mismanagement is that Victoria has recorded the lowest wage growth, just a 0.1 per cent WPI increase. That is against far, far higher inflation. Victorians' wages are going backwards faster than anywhere else in Australia.

Last week, the ABS told us that the cost-of-living indexes continue to rise 6.2 per cent for working Australians. At the same time the cost of food has gone up by 11 per cent. Housing prices have gone up by 15 per cent. Rent has increased by 15 per cent. Electricity has surged 22 per cent, and gas prices have jumped 25 per cent. These aren't just numbers. They represent the daily struggles of Australians trying to make ends meet. Australians are doing it tough, and anybody who tells us that it's just about cutting back on your takeaway coffees could not be further out of touch. It's parents in regional and rural areas that are pulling their kids out of Saturday sports because they can't afford to drive between towns. It's small businesses that are shutting the doors—not selling their businesses but just shutting their doors and walking away because they can't afford to operate.

It's getting harder and harder for Australians, but after two years it's clear that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor simply do not get it. It's a government that promised the world. You'll recall the $275 reduction in your energy bills and promises for more-affordable mortgages to ease the cost of living. All of these promises have been broken. All of them have been abandoned. Instead of taking the hard decisions, like those that Australians are taking around their kitchen tables every single night about their own budgets, the Labor Prime Minister and his Treasurer are falling back on spin. They're trying to fight the symptoms, and not the cause, of the cost-of-living crisis.

The Prime Minister insists that his policies are bringing inflation down, but that is just a lack of assessment of reality. Just last week he said that his budget measures were designed to put downward pressure on inflation but, at the committee inquiry into the cost of living, the chief economist at the RBA said to me: 'In terms of being a sustained return to target, that's not something that we can see coming from those particular policies because they're only designed and legislated for one year, so by their nature they're time limited and they're temporary.' Anybody that bothers to pick up the statement of monetary policy can see this. After a dip which has been described by economists as 'artificial'—they described it as 'smoke and mirrors'—inflation will in fact be higher again the following year by nearly a full percentage point.

The Prime Minister's detachment from reality on this issue makes the challenges even more daunting, but the Treasurer has followed suit. On the very same day that the chief economist of the RBA told the committee that the economy was running a bit hot, the Treasurer said, 'I think it's hard to sustain an argument that the economy is running too hot.' That's a direct contradiction of the independent RBA. The Treasurer and his team are so far out of their economic depth, and they've taken to criticising the independent RBA, rather than listening to their advice.

There is so much that this government could be doing to alleviate cost-of-living pressures, but instead they're trying to sell you a pup—that their high inflation, high expenditure and higher levels of taxation are, in fact, good for you. But Australians are poorer. They are worse off under Labor. It's not that you're feeling poorer; you, in fact, are poorer.