Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Well, it's a pretty ordinary debate, really. We've got what passes for 'economic populism' from the Left, sort of—from the Greens political party—and a pale imitation of right-wing economic populism from Senator Roberts, and then you've got a whole chorus of nothing from the Liberal and National parties. That is what passes for, allegedly, an economic debate brought on by Senator McKim, and then I think we've got something later on from Senator Hughes. It's the same old nonsense. The truth is that inflation is a very significant challenge for this economy, just like it is for every economy around the world. The truth is that inflation, left unchecked, has a deeply unequal impact. It has its toughest impact on low-income households.

Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time on Senator McKim's prescriptions for what should happen in the economy. At least he's honest enough to advance some. The key element of the Greens political party's approach—it's always economic populism; meme first, nothing later—is a rent cap, something that the Commonwealth government can't implement. It's constitutionally prohibited from implementing it, and if it was implemented, what it would lead to is less housing construction and poorer quality accommodation. It would be back to the slums of the 1930s. That's where Senator McKim wants to take Australians. Social media memes do not equal sensible economic policy that goes towards solving very real challenges, and leading people into a cul-de-sac, which is what the Greens political party does by talking absolute rubbish and pretending to people that there are simple solutions for very challenging problems is exactly the kind of left-wing populism that's not actually left-wing—because, if you're actually left-wing, you advance solutions and you mobilise people around them, and they're credible—it's just populism.

But let me turn to the alternative party of government, so-called. What I think is remarkable and is a lesson for all of us is that everybody's got a capacity for personal growth. Having had no interest in all of these issues over the miserable decade that they were in government, suddenly they're on about productivity in the economy, despite the fact that, for the decade they occupied the Treasury benches, productivity growth was at its lowest ever and they did nothing about it. Suddenly they're interested in wages growth, while, during their period in office, wages growth was at its lowest ever. In fact, if you applied the average level of wages growth during the miserable Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison period, 2.1 per cent, to workers' wages over the period of this government, where growth in average weekly earnings has been 3.8 per cent, Australians would be $4,700 a year worse off. That's the truth, and all of this nonsense about real wages growth from those opposite, who never displayed any interest in it when they were in government, is a most callous position that has an utter disregard for the ordinary living circumstances of average wage earners.

On fiscal policy, suddenly they're deeply interested in proper, sound fiscal management, but they delivered not one surplus in government, not even the one that they promised, and they left Australia one trillion dollars in debt with nothing to show for it. They're very interested in building homes, they say, but they took their hands off the wheel completely during their period in government.

There is no policy over there—none—but you can see it beginning to take shape. If they ever got into government or if they had governed over the course of the last two years, what do we know? It would mean savage cuts to public expenditure. Opposing Labor's sensible cost-of-living measures would mean higher inflation, and the economy would be in recession today. That would be the effect of the so-called economic policy prescriptions of those opposite. Australians would be poorer and in a recession. There would be fewer jobs and higher inflation.