Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

We know that this government has spent its entire term fighting everything except inflation. They have spent this entire term trying to divide our nation—to tear this nation apart by its very fabric. We know there was the half a billion dollars spent on the referendum, with its whole objective of dividing this nation by race. They have done everything they can to not look at inflation.

We know that those on the government benches now have forgotten that COVID occurred. All of a sudden, that is the word that cannot be spoken. It's like the $275 that was coming off our energy bills—the number that can never speak its name. But we now know as well that we don't mention COVID because they don't want to acknowledge what was happening over the last few years of the coalition government. But, even with that, this government inherited low unemployment, it inherited strong growth and it inherited a country that was well on its way to recovery out of COVID. It's extraordinary how our country performed throughout COVID and how many jobs were saved. But they have managed to tip all the cookies out of the cookie jar, spill the mess everywhere and continue to make it absolutely appalling for every single household.

The reality is we've been in a per capita recession for 18 months. Those that sit on the treasury benches may be in denial about this, but I'll tell you who's not in denial about the fact that we are in a per capita recession and we have been for 18 months, and that is every single Australian family whose mortgage repayments, the interest repayments on their loans, have tripled—triple repayments on those interest rates.

The pressure that is being put on Australian families is extraordinary, yet those opposite seem to almost make fun of the situation. They're one step off saying that Australians have never had it so good, and the reason they need to keep trotting out the same talking points is that Australians don't believe them. Australians aren't feeling it. Australians know that the average Australian family needs to find an extra $35,000 a year. That's not the kind of cash that is just hiding down the back of the lounge. The average Australian family is having to find $35,000 a year, yet this government will not take any responsibility. They will continue to project every single one of their failures onto someone else. It was just incredible to hear the Treasurer come out and start to hark back to the war in Ukraine. That was their line when they first came into government 2½ years ago: it is everybody else's fault but theirs. But we know that the sticky inflation is staying so sticky because of everything they're doing. That's because, as the RBA tries to slow the economy down to get inflation back under control through its lever of interest rate rises, what we're seeing here is a government addicted to spending—a government that has over $300 billion of new spending.

We have a government that is actually taking no notice of what's happening in the private sector, which is the sector that actually creates jobs—the market. They're not taking any notice of what's happening in the marketplace and the private sector with the slowdowns, and they're artificially buoying up the economy through directly paying and increasing the Public Service and the workforce in those care economies. It is not sustainable. In fact, hearing it described as a Ponzi scheme today is probably the best description of the way that this government is handling the economy. Australia cannot afford another term of government by those sitting opposite.

It is extraordinary how this economy is continuing to contract. Australians are continuing to do it tougher and tougher every single day, and there is no end in sight. Things just look like they're going to keep getting worse. No-one's happy about it. You're the government. Do something about it.