Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Those opposites seem to have become really concerned with spending recently. The numbers show that they had no such concern in their last year of government. As the minister pointed out in question time, spending growth then was 4.1 per cent, compared to Labor's, which is 1.7 per cent. On the savings front, there was a big fat zero from those opposite compared to savings of $77 billion in interest payments from the Labor government. We've seen annual real wage growth at 0.3 per cent to the June quarter. That is the third consecutive quarter of growth that we have seen from the figures released today.

What did we find when we came to government in 2022? Annual real wage growth was going backwards by 3.4 per cent under the coalition. Under Labor, we have delivered growth. In fact, we have seen annual nominal wages growth go up by at least four per cent in four consecutive quarters. In stark contrast, in nine years of the coalition government, there was not one single quarter when annual nominal wages grew above four per cent—not one in nine years. So compare the pair. Under Labor, people are working more, they are earning more and they are keeping more of what they earn, which is in stark contrast to those opposite, who worked so hard to ensure that the wages of people stagnated—under an intentional policy decision. You were in government for nine years. You took some very direct, intentional actions, and you cannot now sit there and deny it. You cannot sit there and now say that you care about people's wages. The way you're going on and on about the cost of living—when it was not something you ever paid any attention to in nine long years of government.

And then there were the car parks. In question time, we heard about infrastructure spending. There are not a lot of car parks from us over here, but we have taken significant action to improve the transparency and accountability of public spending because of what we saw you guys do, because of what we inherited when we came to government and because of the rorts and fiasco we saw under your lack of leadership. What has happened under the Albanese Labor government since we came in, in 2022, is that the minister has taken significant actions to improve accountability and transparency for public spending. The minister has embedded new assurances and protections in the federation funding agreement.

The FFA outlines the states' and territories' responsibility to ensure the value for the spending of public money, improving productivity in construction. The new FFA is designed to ensure that both levels of government are accountable, that we share the accountability and that we improve the transparency. We share the responsibility for fiscal discipline and for planning so that projects are going to be completed in a timely manner and in an accountable manner with those public funds. Let's not forget these are public funds.

Effective priority setting, risk management, accountability and transparency—these are the things that we are driving. We are driving these reforms to ensure that is what we are getting in our public funding, and all the muck and bother that we listen to in this chamber at the more artistic times of the day, particularly in question time, is a little bit of a fiasco. Where are the facts? Line up the numbers; line up the facts. We can compare, very simply, the record of the Liberal government over nine years to the record of the Albanese Labor government. More accountability, more transparency, more actions to assist people on the ground who are doing it tough—that's what we are standing for. That is what we have always done. You cannot recreate history just because you're now in opposition.