Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to all questions without notice asked today.

One of the things that concern me the most is the ongoing challenges in relation to the cost-of-living crisis in our country and the ongoing challenges that everyday Australians have in relation to inflation, which is really problematic. Senator Birmingham asked the Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Gallagher, a really important question: for how many quarters has Australia been in a per capita recession? That is a very simple question to answer. It takes about five or 10 seconds, maximum. But for two minutes we heard a narrative around what was inherited by this government. We heard a narrative around a scare campaign that the government is running in relation to what the opposition may or may not do when they are next in government. So, instead of actually answering the question and talking about what this government is doing to solve these problems, they keep pointing back to the opposition.

The answer to the question is six—six quarters of per capita recession. It's a pretty basic answer, a standard answer, a one-digit answer to the question Senator Birmingham asked. It's curious to me that Senator Gallagher didn't want to answer the question. It would have been simpler to just answer it and then go on to the next question. But I think it's reflective of the problem we have in this government in that there is, for whatever reason, an inability to answer or a decision actually not to answer questions that are asked, which further compounds the problems we have, for two reasons: (1) if you won't acknowledge or address that you have a problem, you can't fix it; and (2) you then have a complete loss of confidence from the Australian public in your ability to fix any of the problems we currently have.

Senator Birmingham asked more questions in relation to that, and again Senator Gallagher didn't answer. She spoke about sensible investments, and I need to point to the energy rebate of $75 a quarter. I don't think that is a sensible investment. I don't think it is sensible that in a cost-of-living crisis every household in this country gets a $75-a-quarter discount on its bill. People for whom $75 doesn't matter at all get a rebate, and then we have families where $75 is really important and something that helps them make ends meet. So it's not, in my view, a sensible investment to give $75 a quarter to super-wealthy people who don't need it. I was glad, though, to hear Senator Gallagher confirm that we are in difficult times and that we do have an inflation challenge. I think that's a really important acknowledgement.

Senator Hume also asked some questions in relation to the government's spending. Again, Senator Gallagher spoke about investments contributing to the continuing growth of the economy. Well, in fact it's not growing. We have had six quarters of per capita recession. Senator Gallagher acknowledged that population growth is contributing to what she called growth of the economy. So the reason we didn't have the recession that we didn't actually speak of is record migration levels. We are in fact experiencing six quarters of per capita recession in our country. It is something this government doesn't want to acknowledge. If they don't acknowledge it, if they don't speak of it, they can't plan to fix it, and if they don't plan to fix it then they won't fix it at all.

The last piece I want to speak about is around Senator Cash's questions to Senator Wong in relation to the CFMEU. This is really disturbing, particularly in relation to how long our Prime Minister knew about the issues that were afoot at the CFMEU. Whilst there may be a narrative about what was publicly disclosed and what wasn't, it's important to understand that during this period this government continued to take donations from the CFMEU—over $6 million worth of donations. If you believe that there is something wrong and that funds are potentially the proceeds of crime, you should not be taking them. But this Prime Minister continued to take those funds, and there are some serious questions we need to ask. When did the Prime Minister know? Why did he keep taking the money, and did anybody encourage him to stop taking the money?