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

That's a broken promise right there! The purpose of our surpluses is to put downward pressure on inflation. The purpose of our cost-of-living relief is to support families through what is a challenging period and put downward pressure on inflation—a trick that those opposite could never pull off, aren't capable of and have opposed every step of the way. Wage rises, tax cuts, rent assistance, knocking off student debt, electricity relief, childcare relief—these things have made a real difference. For working families in Western Australia, South Australia, in the territories and on the east coast of Tasmania, reducing childcare costs and lifting childcare wages made child care better and reduced costs for parents, meaning more people participating for more hours in the economy.

Do you know how economically illiterate this show are? When the latest productivity figures come out—just conceptually, I want you to try to think about it for a second—if the number of hours worked goes up then labour productivity falls. I just want to let you in on the secret. For the people on that side, this is like a catastrophe. Labour productivity moves up and down. It's the long-term trajectory that you have to examine. After the failed decade of the lowest productivity growth on record in Australian history that made some of the undeveloped economies look good during the Morrison-Abbott-Turnbull catastrophe, the idea that this show would criticise this government on the basis of productivity performance is like Idi Amin criticising another country for their human rights performance. That's a reference that the gen Z people that Senator Bragg talked about might not get. But that's what we have achieved.

The research demonstrates that, if you followed the Dutton approach on wages and tax cuts, working Australians would be $4,700 worse off in real terms. That's if the squalid torpor approach that characterises the show opposite had prevailed. We've delivered wage reform. We've delivered tax reform so that people earn more and keep more of what they earn. That's meant for childcare workers and aged-care workers, in particular, that their wages have lifted. It's good for them, good for their kids, good for their communities, good for participation in the economy, good for caring for little kids and supporting their education and good for caring for older Australians.

The surpluses that we have delivered, plus the cost-of-living relief that we have engaged in, has not solved every problem—not at all. There is still more work to do. Inflation is much lower than it was at its dizzying heights when the Morrison government lost office. It has fallen. It still has further to go. There is still more work to do. This government will continue to do that work.

That's the here and now, but we are also engaged in long-term structural reform in the energy market in particular, where we have to turn this great big ship around. It's headed for disaster. Four gigawatts of generation capacity went out of the electricity system and every single coal-fired power station in the country closed down or announced their closure under these characters' watch. They used to carry around lumps of coal in the parliament. The energy market was in complete disarray. The investment community around the world didn't bother knocking in Australia. I know Senator Bragg doesn't like foreign investment, but it is how you get things done. The investment community didn't want to come anywhere near Australia because of the sovereign risk that was presented to them by the government. So there needed to be energy reform

Future Made in Australia is, again, an area where Senator Bragg and Mr Taylor—God love him, poor old Angus Taylor—are out there talking down Australian manufacturing and the capacity of Australians to make things. The claims that are made about Future Made in Australia by the coalition that is now formed by the Liberals, Nationals and Greens are quite curious. What they say is that Australians aren't up to it. That's the message they send. This is the show that had former senator Johnston in here.