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

Senator O'Neill, how much do you think—through you, Mr Deputy President—your assistance helped a small business whose energy bills have gone up $10,000 in a quarter or a family whose mortgage repayments have gone up since you came to power, Senator O'Neill, by $15,000 a year? Their price of groceries has gone up 12 per cent. Their price of electricity has gone up 22 per cent. We have gone, in my home state of Western Australia, under a state Labor government and a federal Labor government, from having the cheapest electricity pretty much in the world or one of the cheapest electricity prices in the world to one of the most expensive. Extraordinary. As Senator Fawcett so eloquently outlined, the cost of electricity in South Australia has gone up extraordinarily, even though, according to those opposite, under their policy of renewables only, they should have the cheapest electricity in the world. Guess what? It's not.

And people are understanding this. The Australian people aren't mugs. They aren't stupid. The Australian people aren't being bought off by the bread-and-circuses act from this government. They know real economic management is about making sure you do everything you can to put downward pressure on interest rates. Inflation, inflation—downward pressure on inflation. Inflation and interest rates are economy destroyers. They are standard-of-living destroyers. That is why under this government, contrary to their rhetoric on wages, we've actually seen real wages falling—under this government—as the cost of living and the prices of groceries, of petrol, of electricity and of mortgage repayments skyrocket. And every Australian family knows that. Every Australian small business knows that. We've got record business closures. We've got record numbers of businesses going into administration. We've got a record number of small businesses whose owners cannot take money out of the business. They're still paying their staff, but they cannot take money out of the business because of the economic management of this Labor government, because of the burden of interest rate rises on their business and the destructive and corrosive effects of inflation.