Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The latest Living Cost Index, which shows cost of living is up 19.4% since Labor came to power, confirms what Australians see every day, hardworking families and businesses are struggling under an Albanese Labor Government that has pursued the wrong priorities and made the wrong decisions, demonstrating that Australians can't afford three more years of Labor.

Every election is important, and many Australians will know through harsh experience over the last 2½ years that this election is especially important. But, at the outset, I just want to demonstrate that, in 2025, whether it be on 29 March, 12 April or 17 May, the decisions that Australians make at this election are perhaps the most critical that they have had to make in the last three decades.

In 1998, when John Howard was the Prime Minister, Australians were faced with a difficult choice. Having enjoyed the benefits of economic reform and economic prosperity, they were asked to go one step further and to embrace the goods and services tax reform proposed by John Howard and Peter Costello. That was a tough decision. It was a tough election campaign, but the country is better for the decision to re-elect John Howard; re-elect the Treasurer, Peter Costello; and engage in tax reform of the most significant kind this country has ever seen. Indeed, this year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the goods and services tax in our country.

Then again, in 2001, under the stewardship of John Howard as Prime Minister, the country was faced with another important election decision, and that was the primacy of our national security challenges, demonstrated by the Tampa incident and by other challenging issues that were happening throughout the world. Then of course in 2019, miraculously for those of us on this side—pleasantly miraculously—Prime Minister Scott Morrison was re-elected when Australians treated with great caution and, indeed, trepidation the ideas of the then opposition leader Bill Shorten to raise taxes for ordinary Australian families.

Again, they're faced with a difficult but critical choice in terms of embracing a better future. Everyone in this country, even Senator Sheldon, even Senator Chisholm, even Senator Grogan and even Senator Ghosh, would be surprised at how disastrous this government has been after just 2½ years. The government like to talk about everything they have done, but the only measure is the effect of what they have done. The effect of what they have done has been to keep inflation high and to put Australian families under stress through 12 interest rate rises. When families gather around their barbecues and their kitchen tables and think about their future, the parents and grandparents of Australians in 2025 cannot say that the future of their children and their grandchildren is guaranteed for the next three, six or nine years. We know from our own experience, from the International Monetary Fund, from the OECD, from the Minerals Council of Australia and from the chambers of commerce around our country that living standards have collapsed and people cannot be guaranteed of a prosperous future beyond their immediate sights.

Labor's legacy has been to make the country poorer and to make the country less safe. That's the hard choice that Australians are going to face when they go to the ballot box on 12 April, 17 May or 29 March. I say that because apparently I hear that the Prime Minister doesn't like being told when the election will be, so I thought we might just try and push him to a date. Australians are ready to make a decision. They're ready to make a decision about their financial future.

This Labor government promised so much. In Perth, the capital city of my home state of Western Australia, in May 2022 Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that things would be better under Labor. I dare him to come back to Perth in 2025 and stand in front of the same audience in the electorate of Swan and tell people that things have been better under Labor and will continue to be better. We know that that is just not true and not the record of this government. Core inflation remains above the RBA band, at 3.2 per cent. Underlying inflation has continued to be outside the band for 12 quarters. Prices are not going down. Prices continue to go up. It is time for a change.