Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A letter has been received from Senator Dean Smith:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

The number one current pressure on Australians' wellness is the cost of living, but the Albanese Labor government is spending its time writing out-of-date and misleading reports rather than making the hard decisions to get inflation lower faster, which is what really matters to millions of Australians.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Senator Smith.

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

Yesterday, the Treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers, gave himself a pat on the back for the government's work in combating inflation and taking credit for the pause in the lifting of interest rates. The Treasurer said he welcomed the progress that the government was making in combating inflation. In doing so, though, the Treasurer has ignored two very, very important points.

The first point is the accumulative impact of 11 rate rises in this country since Labor was elected to government. That is rate rise upon rate rise 11 times, and the cumulative effect of that is that Australian families are now having to find more and more money from their budgets to support mortgage rate increases. So the pause in the lifting of interest rates above 4.1 per cent is relief for those families, who are having to find extra money to support those 11 rate rises. It is not a holiday for them. It is not a holiday for them.

The second matter that the Treasurer has chosen to ignore is the release today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics of its latest data with regard to what they call the selective cost-of-living index. The select cost-of-living index released by the ABS today provides a more granular analysis of the impact of inflation on the Australian economy. It was a revealing what the ABS released today in that selected cost-of-living index, and it is revealing because what that index does is provides to parliamentarians, like me, and others in the community a detailed insight into the inflationary impact on a pensioner, on a family, on a retiree.

What did the ABS say today? The ABS said this morning, when it released the index, that all five living cost indexes rose between 6.3 per cent and 9.6 per cent over 12 months to June this year. If you listen closely to Dr Chalmers, the Treasurer, and to other Labor members of parliament, you would have thought that price rises were no longer happening in this country. Well, the ABS has absolutely refuted that today. Price rises have been happening in this country for the last 12 months, and they are in the order of 6.3 to 9.6 per cent. That means the price of things for Australians, under Labor, has risen between 6.3 and 9.6 per cent over the last 12 months.

What else did it say? It said that one particular group of people in this country have recorded the strongest annual rises on record—not my words; this is quoted from the ABS this morning. Employee households have recorded the strongest annual rises on record. That is the welcome progress that Jim Chalmers talked about the other day.

Australian families are hurting, and it's worth remembering that, when we consider what has happened to interest rates in this country, we remember these three important figures: 880,000 loans this year alone will shift from fixed to variable rates. That means those loans—880,000 this year—will be impacted by those 11 rate rises under Labor. But more than that, the 590,000 fixed loans that shifted to variable rate loans last year will also be impacted by Labor's interest rate rises; and, at a minimum, the 450,000 fixed rates that will transfer to variable rates next year will be impacted by those 11 rate rises. Jim Chalmers and Labor engaged in a vanity project by announcing their 'wellbeing budget'. (Time expired)

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I feel a great deal of pleasure speaking on this matter of public importance because what it really demonstrates is the absolute misunderstanding of what the obligations are for the opposition because they have sat for a very long time. When dealing with the cost of living they can gripe and they can complain, but they've opposed bill after bill and proposal after proposal that this government has put forward. They've turned around and voted them down, whether it be in energy or whether it be in an area which I'll concentrate on in my few minutes, and that is the area of industrial relations.

I might wake them up to a couple of things that have happened, because they never happened under their watch. Since the winter sittings, several of our actions to increase wages have taken effect. The minimum wage is up $1.85 an hour, taking the total increase under this government to nearly $3 an hour. Two point seven million workers on awards have received a 5.75 per cent pay rise, which is the largest increase since at least 2009; and 250,000 aged-care workers got a historic 15 per cent wage rise, meaning nurses on award wages can earn an extra $10,000 a year. At the same time, unemployment is now at an historic low of 3.5 per cent, with almost half a million more Australians in work compared to when Labor came to office. Those are significant improvements in our economy.

When it comes to wages, we know what they are about on the opposite side. They're about low wages. The Liberal Party and the Nationals are about low wages. But when we talk about the cost of living we have to talk about the things that offset cost-of-living increases. There are challenges in the economy. We all know that. The world knows there are challenges to economies across the world. But what we're doing is putting positions and opportunities in place to make sure that hardworking Australians are able to get wage increases—better incomes.

No-one in this country could seriously say that those opposite offer anything other than low wages because that's what quite clearly happened in the decade of record low wages growth under those opposite. Low wages growth was a deliberate design feature of their economic policy. That's what Mathias Cormann said! It was a deliberate exercise of their policy. That is exactly what they're about. They're about making sure that you out there get paid less, and not putting the systems in place to make sure you get paid a fair amount. That's their proposition for dealing with cost-of-living challenges. Remember, they refused to support the $1 an hour wage increase to those on the minimum wage, who are the most disadvantaged people on the wage spectrum. They opposed it, and they still do not support incredibly important initiatives.

The legislation that was brought forward in the last many months under this government has led to, for example, ANZ and the union reaching an agreement. After stalled negotiations the Finance Sector Union has reached an in-principle agreement with ANZ on wages and conditions that includes a pay rise of 16.5 per cent over four years for workers earning up to $100,000 a year, and guarantees pay increases for the higher paid staff. The FSU's National Secretary, Julia Angrisano, said:

Negotiations with the ANZ would not have been possible without reforms to industrial relations laws brought in by the Albanese government.

They opposed it. They hated the idea that bank workers, along with so many other workers—including minimum wage workers—are going to get paid a wage increase. They hate the concept that people should have a voice to turn around and negotiate better wages under a Labor government, rather than their strategy of always keeping wages low. The strategy of the Liberal and National Parties is always to keep wages low. Of course, that ANZ agreement went to many other important initiatives, agreements and arrangements that have an effect on cost of living, lifestyle and wellbeing for many working people. If they don't believe me then they should look at the EMC poll. The Australian community are saying that you are behind—you're out of date. The change to workplace laws to better protect workers from wage theft has been approved by 70 per cent of the Australian community. The increase to minimum wage by 65 per cent of the Australian community. Changes to workplace laws for labour-hire loopholes are to be closed— (Time expired)

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no more important issue facing Australians than the rising cost of living under the Albanese Labor government. It's not the Voice referendum, which the Prime Minister is prioritising over millions of Australian families facing poverty and the many thousands facing homelessness. That's after his vote-buying false promise at the election to reduce energy costs. Australians' energy bills have never been higher thanks directly to the Labor Party government. Immigration has never been higher than it is under this Labor government, and it is directly responsible for the high demand driving the housing, rental and homelessness crisis. This includes 250,000 foreign students who occupy seven out of every 10 new Australian homes. Arresting inflation has led to huge increases in mortgage payments, forcing many families to sell their homes and try their luck in a rental market with vacancy rates lower than one per cent.

Instead of dealing with this appalling state of affairs, this Labor government produced a wellness budget using highly subjective and out-of-date information from before the COVID-19 pandemic. I'd be interested to know how much this worthless document cost. It actually concluded that mortgage stress in Australia was decreasing, if you can believe that. All evidence shows that wellness primarily flows from the prosperity created by a growing national economy with high productivity. Our economy may be growing with this artificial record immigration, but our productivity is going down the drain. This government needs to start doing its job rather than wasting time and money on subjective reports full of self-adulation that say and achieve absolutely nothing. At the end of the day, it's the governments who drive the economy, and all I've seen is it going down under both governments.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll just remind those who are listening at home that we're currently debating a matter of public importance that was moved by my good friend Senator Dean Smith from Western Australia. That matter is that the No. 1 current pressure on Australians' wellness is the cost of living, but the Albanese Labor government is spending its time writing out-of-date and misleading reports rather than making the hard decisions to lower inflation faster, which is what really matters to millions of Australians. I don't know what planet the Labor Party is on, but it's certainly not planet Earth. I suppose we shouldn't expect anything less from a Treasurer who is the economic love child of Wayne Swan and Paul Keating, who are two of the world's worst finance ministers or Treasurers, when you look at their records. Our Treasurer in Australia is Dr Jim Chalmers. I'm not knocking someone who has a PhD, but I certainly question their lucidity, because, when they choose to do a PhD on Paul Keating, you wonder whether medication should be lowered or increased in that particular instance. We've got a Treasurer, a Labor Party and a government in Australia who aren't dealing with the cost of living.

Apart from these interesting reports that they pop out, with their nice fonts and things like that, what they are talking about, day in and day out, is something called the Voice. They're talking about something that is going to divide Australians. They're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a referendum to try and divide Australians. They will spend hundreds of millions of dollars—not of their money but of taxpayers' money—on a proposal that is risky and unknown, which will be permanent and divisive. We've found out this week through questions in question time in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives that not only is the government not dealing with the No. 1 issue impacting upon Australians—that is, the cost of living—but that the Voice is going to lead down a track. It's going to lead to something called a treaty. What we found out in question time today was that the ministers who were asked questions about the treaty failed to rule out a treaty, failed to rule out reparations, failed to rule out what percentage of GDP would be set. So we're going to talk about the cost of living, but what's also going to cost Australians is if we have a divisive referendum on the Voice and then we have a treaty that will then lead down the track to a financial settlement that is going to cost Australians even more.

I've just spent the last few weeks driving around regional, remote and rural Queensland, and the No. 1 issue in Queensland is the cost of living and all the associated parts of it, that people have been whacked by the 11 interest rate rises that have happened under this Labor government. The people are being whacked by insurance premium rises. The people are being whacked by a rising inflation rate that hits them constantly, and yet we have a Labor party from a different planet, who don't understand this and are focused on these woke issues that they think will lead Australia down some path to utopia, when, in fact, what Australians want from their governments are practical measures to help to assist them in dealing with this cost-of-living crisis, and it is a cost-of-living crisis. I would encourage Mr Albanese to visit Burketown in the Burke Shire. He hasn't been there because it's not in a marginal seat. He hasn't been there because it's probably hard for camera crews to get there, but Burketown and the associated Burke Shire and Doomadgee were wiped out by a terrible flood earlier this year. But no Labor prime minister's been there. I don't think any Labor cabinet minister's been there. The Labor Party has no interest in this because there aren't any camera crews. The parts of Queensland are being let down by this axis of Labor incompetence and Labor malfeasance, with Palaszczuk, who spends all her time on the red carpet joined by Anthony Albanese— (Time expired)

Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor Party was elected to government promising Australians that it had a plan to deal with cost-of-living pressures. They had a plan alright—what the Labor government never told the public was that their plan was to increase the cost of living, not decrease it. Everything this government does, from its ideologically driven renewable energy policy to its repeated and ever-growing cost-of-living support measures, only serves to do one thing and that's increase inflationary pressure. Treasurer Chalmers has continued Labor's long tradition of tax and spend, while turning Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe into a patsy for the dozen interest rate rises that have occurred on his watch. It is time for Prime Minister Albanese to admit to the Australian people that they will not be getting their much talked about $275 power price cut for the simple reason that his government haven't the faintest idea on how to deal with the cost of living.

Their only plan so far has been to repeatedly insist that they have a plan while running around like headless chooks with no plan at all—as far as I can tell anyway. The easiest way to fix Australia's cost-of-living problem is, obviously, to vote the Labor party out, and then to eventually to vote the UAP to government. That's how you do it. Obviously, we can't do that right now, but our time will come. What the Labor government can do, at the moment, is to abandon the net zero delusion and say no to the unions, how about that? I know it's hard to say no when you're joined at the hip and in a long-term relationship, but sometimes tough decisions are needed. It's plain for everyone to see that the policies of the Labor Party are driving Australian families to the wall. They owe the regulator everything, and, of course, like I said, the main beneficiaries are their union mates.

The government are addicted to legislation. They do nothing but add layer upon layer of bureaucracy to an already overgoverned nation. The more red tape there is, the more consumers eventually end up paying. I've never met an Australian on the street—not one—that desires more legislation. What's wrong with repealing some, instead? How about that? What's wrong with reducing red and green tape? Have you ever seen a government project run on time and on budget? I haven't seen one. The only way we can reduce the cost of living in Australia is to make sure that the government of the day—it doesn't matter if it's on the left or the right—keep their sticky little fingers to themselves. That's it. Vote 1 UAP.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There we have it in the tag line what it's all about. It's self-aggrandising. This is a debate about the cost of living that has been brought on by the motion of Senator Dean Smith. It's supposed to be about the cost of living. What we just heard in those two contributions that I was in the chamber paying attention to was exactly the model of the former government—cynical, negative, without a vision for Australia and attacking the person. We saw the most outrageous attack on the persons of Australia through the robodebt scandal that the former Prime Minister continues to deny. People look to this chamber, the Senate, and this parliament to understand that they are doing it tough, that there are real challenges that they are facing, and to respond. So I find it incredibly rich that the Liberal and National parties, after nine long years of falling real wage growth, wasted opportunities and $1 trillion of debt, are now deciding they should take a bit of an interest in Australia's wellbeing.

Unlike those opposite, the Albanese government is focused on doing the important work to ensure that the livelihoods of regular Australians are improving. I'll start by reiterating some of the facts of the latest CPI figures. Inflation is down from its peak, under the former government, of 7.8 per cent. It's down over this year to December. We've had most recently only a 0.8 per cent increase over the last quarter. That is well below the 2.1 per cent that was posted in the March 2022 quarter, when those opposite were in government. So the reality is that Australians who are listening to this can take some heart that while there is incredible cost-of-living pressure—and we absolutely acknowledge that—we are acting to support them in the most fiscally responsible way possible.

We can make sure that we celebrate the wins in our economy, instead of the miserly personal attacks we see from those opposite. It is beneath what an opposition needs to do. Australians need the opposition to be genuinely engaged in seeking and supporting solutions to improve their wellbeing and mental health and with the fiscal responsibility that needs to be undertaken to achieve all of those good outcomes.

In getting inflation down, the Albanese government is adhering to a very responsible, orderly three-point plan. Australians need to know they can have confidence in this plan being implemented. We said we would do things. We said we would set up the NACC, and we did. We are doing what we said. Firstly, this government has recorded a budget surplus of $20 billion, a feat of budget restraint which eluded the coalition for its entire term in office. What's more, we banked that against the $1 trillion of debt that the former government put us in. That's being a responsible government to take the pressure off.

Secondly, the government know that members in our community really are struggling, so we've provided really targeted cost-of-living measures to those who are most vulnerable, and we're doing that without adding to inflation. Notable is the increase in ways that affect people who are on JobSeeker, youth allowance and rent assistance, and that's just to name a few.

The third critical aspect of our response to the challenges that Australia is facing is that the government has invested on the supply side to boost the long-run capacity of the economy and secure Australia's long-term prosperity with the National Reconstruction Fund. That's an excellent example of our initiative to create jobs in Australia, to build capacity in Australia and to deal with the incredible supply-chain challenges that became manifestly evident to every Australian in the course of COVID. And the results are in on this already.

The Albanese government knows that the budget is actually reducing inflation in the next financial year. I was in the room with the RBA governor at estimates when he said that Labor's policies are expected to directly reduce inflation by three-quarters of a percentage point in 2023-24. I hear others on the other side grumbling at that, and this is what we see constantly: the whinge-fest, the personal attacks and the negativity of a former government that, when in government, delivered a trillion dollars of debt and no wage growth over 10 years. It didn't build housing. It didn't look after hospitals. We've had to triple the Medicare rebate so that people can even get to see a doctor. And the minute we get some good news, what do they do? They whinge about it. No cost-of-living relief from those opposite—

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator O'Neill. Senator Brockman?

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let's put a few facts on the table. First of all, we've heard a fair bit about wages from those opposite. The coalition in government delivered real wage rises across Australia until—guess what?—there was this thing called the pandemic. Across the period of the coalition government there were real wage rises. What has the Labor government delivered? It's delivered real wage decreases at staggering, record rates. Senator O'Neill talked about when inflation peaked. In fact, inflation peaked in the fourth quarter, the final quarter, of fiscal year '22. When was the election? I'm sure my colleagues remember—I think it was in May. So the final quarter of '22 would have been under the Labor government. And that's when inflation peaked at a 32-year high of 7.8 per cent.

Those opposite have no clue about how to tackle the cost-of-living crisis facing ordinary Australians. We saw it in the budget, with economist after senior economist coming out and saying that the budget was acting against the interests of lowering inflation. I've read these quotes into Hansard before; I won't do it again. There is quote after quote after quote from senior economists: Stephen Anthony, managing director at Macroeconomics Advisory; Chris Richardson, economist at Rich Insight; David Bassanese, chief economist at BetaShares; Andrew Boak, chief economist at Goldman Sachs. I could go on: George Tharenou, economist at UBS; Michael Blythe, chief economist at PinPoint Macro Analytics; and Cherelle Murphy, chief economist at EY Oceania. All have cast doubt on the Labor government's budget, saying it puts downward pressure on inflation.

I give the Reserve Bank credit. The Reserve Bank took a month off. They took a month to watch what the Labor Party budget was doing to the economy, as they should have—that's the Reserve Bank's job. The Reserve Bank's job is to watch what the government is doing with the levers at its disposal, watch what is happening in the general economy and then decide whether they have to raise interest rates again. And guess what? A month after the budget, after they had considered the impacts of the Labor government's policy, they felt they had to act by raising interest rates again because, in the opinion of the Reserve Bank, the Labor government budget was clearly not putting downward pressure on interest rates.

Now, let's look at some of the other policies that those opposite laud as having a downward impact on the cost of living and inflation—for instance, their gas policy. They regularly criticise us for not having supported a poorly thought-out gas policy that actually reduced investment in gas. Putting price caps in place is a sure way over the long term to push the price up. Not only will it push the price up in the longer term; it's also deferring investment. You need new investment because the only sure way of putting downward pressure on price in the longer term is to actually have new supplies coming into the market. Instead of encouraging investment, they are actually deterring investment. You don't have to take my word for it: let's listen to the head of one of Japan's top energy think tanks, Mr Terazawa, who stated on the public record:

Australia has been our most trusted supplier of LNG. Unfortunately, the recent policy changes in Australia put serious questions on the future role of Australia as a reliable supplier of LNG.

What does that mean? It means that Japan, which has been significantly responsible for investments into Australia and into Australian gas fields, bringing supply online, is going to Canada.

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the discussion has expired.