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

The Senate will now consider the proposal from Senator Hughes, which is also shown at item 12 on today's Senate Order of Business:

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

Australians are being hit with a triple whammy of skyrocketing costs of essentials, falling real wages and now an interest rate hike, which demonstrates a clear failure of the Albanese Government to deliver a plan to ease the cost of living.

Is the proposal supported?

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

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all the colleagues on this side, as I rise to bring a matter of public importance to the chamber, that it was so overwhelmingly supported, and I know that's because every person in this place—or certainly every person on this side of the chamber—is willing to recognise that the single most important issue facing Australians today is the cost of living. You would also hope it would be the top priority for this Albanese government. We know that on 4 May 2022 Prime Minister Albanese put out a tweet:

Australians are being hit with a triple whammy of skyrocketing costs of essentials, falling real wages and now an interest rate hike. They need a government with a plan to ease the cost of living.

Do you know what? Never a truer word was spoken. Australians are now being hit with a triple whammy of skyrocketing costs of essentials; falling real wages, not that 'real' is a word that can pass the lips of those opposite; and now another interest rate hike, the 12th under this government. This demonstrates a clear failure of the Albanese government to deliver a cost of living plan.

Now, you would think that those opposite would be nodding along in fierce agreement, but they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the full effect of pain and hardship being felt by households all over the country. They absolutely cannot bring themselves to do anything but partisan politics, and the Australian people are growing sick and tired of this, and it really is starting to show. The Sydney Morning Herald led a story, 'Voters' gloomy outlook worsens.' Aussies are bracing for hardship, according to the article. They're expecting price hikes and falling wages, despite the government's empty promises. Even the SMH can see through it:

Only 8 per cent of voters expect the economy to improve over the next three months and 50 per cent believe it will get worse …

Fifty-two per cent of people say this is the highest priority issue for their vote, and that's up from 32 per cent last year. The Australian today has an article entitled 'PM pays the rise for rising costs.' It says:

Anthony Albanese's standing among voters continues to tank amid rising cost-of-living pressures, 13 rate hikes and the voice referendum fallout, with a new poll revealing the Prime Minister's net favourability has plunged by 37 points since May.

They are two very different mastheads with very similar conclusions.

This is a government that's failing, and the people know it. Business knows it. The AFR reports today that our economy has taken a major plunge in a resilience ranking, that we have fallen from first place in 2004 down to 20th place in 2023. It has determined:

Australia dropped further than comparable countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand in the same period. It plummeted 15 places on economic competitiveness, and from 21st to 52nd place on quality of energy infrastructure.

This is all indicative of the total inaction and obfuscation of this government on the economy. The Prime Minister is missing in action or, when he's seen, he is out there acting on ideological crusades.

We are now seeing the highest rates since 2011—not surprisingly, when the Labor government was last in power. When we left government the rate was 0.33. What is it now? It's 4.35. We know that an average family with a mortgage of $750,000 has to find an extra $24,000 a year. Rents are up. Nationally, we have seen a three-bedder go from $440 to $665 week and we know that on the east coast it's significantly higher than that. Inflation is way too high, higher than almost every other advanced economy. Electricity prices are up, and people are going to suffer this summer, particularly if it is as hot as predicted, choosing whether they can put food on the table or have a little bit of air conditioning. Insurance is up. Food is up. These issues all continue to compound on each other, making the pain worse for Australian families every day.

Mr Albanese, your own words condemn you. The triple whammy you spoke of falls squarely at your feet, and you were spot on. Australians deserve a government with a plan and it's clearly not yours.

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

():  Again we have those opposite talking about cost of living. Included in the MPI, of course, is wages. As has been said, they clearly want to turn around and say that this is about getting real change, but what they're about is making sure that they just join in a class war with the Minerals Council of Australia. They want to turn around and jump in with people that spent $24 million to make sure that the Australian public, the Australian community, has no further wage increases of any real nature. That's what they've been about all the way through whilst they've been in opposition. They opposed a dollar-an-hour minimum wage increase for the lowest-paid workers. They opposed a 5.4 per cent increase for minimum-paid workers. They opposed aged-care workers getting better wages, because it's just part of their class war. They can't help themselves.

Why do I say it's a class war? Because the Australian public says to those across the way very clearly what they expect of them. There was a recent survey that came out today. I suggest they read it. Essential Research says that, despite millions of dollars of advertising by big business lobbies supporting the oppositions position of a class war, the vast majority of the public—64 per cent—believe that big business has too much power. So here they are, spending tens of millions of dollars to suppress wages across the economy. At the same time, they're turning around and bankrolling and astroturfing the entire Australian economy, turning around and making sure that the National Farmers Federation, ACCI, AIG—all these people they're funding, because they're on the side of big business.

Roy Hill published just today as part of answers—partly answered, not fully answered questions that were put as a result of the inquiry into the closing the loopholes legislation. They said today, 'We will continue to do all we can to have this bill voted down by parliament,' because you're on the side of the most powerful people, the billionaires in this country, rather than hardworking Australians who are trying to get a decent living.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

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

They always get upset about this one. The reality is that, time and time again, they vote with Qantas, with Alan Joyce, Richard Goyder and the wonderful board. They probably even said to their mates on the board, 'Make sure that all those recalcitrants get re-elected,' because they backed this class war. You guys over there are part of the class war strategy, which most of the people in this country find absolutely ridiculous. They keep voting with their feet in every survey of what their view is. Eighty per cent of Australians agree that measures to protect workers from wage theft should be brought in. They oppose that. Sixty-five per cent agree that employees and labour hire workers should be paid the same if they are doing the same job. They oppose it. Sixty-five per cent want the government to change workplace laws to close labour hire loopholes. They oppose it because they're on one side. They're on the billionaires' side. They're on the side of the ones making all that money, who want to bankroll everybody else in the employer group, who hold the same philosophy that working people should have their wages suppressed.

I'm going to say there are exceptions to that, because there are good businesses out there. One of those good businesses is Whitehaven, who just recently bought three coalmines from BHP up in Queensland. Now, BHP is, of course, one of the recalcitrants about suppressing wages and on their side for this class war that they're so adamant about waging against the Australian public. When I say 'class war', I don't mean this class or that class; I mean they're for them at the top. They're against everyone else in the middle and further below. Even Whitehaven, to their great credit, when they bought three mines off BHP—a substantially larger operation than Whitehaven that had an operation that turned around and paid between 30 and 40 per cent less for labour hire doing the exact same work. Guess what. They're not labour hire engaged by another company. They're labour hire engaged by their own company. To their credit, when Whitehaven bought those three mines, they said, 'We'll pay the highest rate to every miner working on that site.' They decided that, unlike the class warriors on the other side, they would turn around and make sure they gave a fair day's pay for a fair day's work for every other worker. Good on you, Whitehaven. Let's fight the class war together.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When interest rates go up, as they are in Australia at the moment—and I remind people we have had a record number of consecutive interest rate rises from the Reserve Bank of Australia, something we've never seen in Australia's history—some things inevitably flow. What inevitably flows is pain for people who are carrying debt, and in Australia overwhelmingly that means pain for mortgage holders, particularly mortgage holders who believed the former governor of the RBA, Dr Philip Lowe, when he said that interest rates would not go up for years. We are still within the period in which Dr Lowe promised interest rates wouldn't go up and yet we're on the back of 13 consecutive interest rates rises.

Another thing that happens when interest rates go up is rents go up. Ultimately, property speculators who own rental stock end up paying higher repayments because the interest rates are going up on their mortgages, and, therefore, they pass that pain on to the people that are renting from them. That is one of the reasons we should make sure that houses are not considered, as the Australian Labor Party believes they should be, as an asset class but, in fact, are considered as a human right. We're a rich enough and wealthy enough country to ensure that every person in this country has a home, and it is a disgrace that neoliberalism has turned houses from homes into an investment and asset class.

Something else that happens when interest rates go up is they put people out of work. Australians need to understand that, when the Reserve Bank of Australia says that it wants to slow down the economy, what it's actually saying is it wants more Australians to be made unemployed. Interestingly, the Labor Party agrees with that strategy, and Labor's budget from May last year was predicated on more than 100,000 extra Australians being forced out of work. Those are the numbers in Labor's budget.

Something else that happens when interest rates go up is bank profits go up. Surprise, surprise, we have seen the banks over recent weeks announce massive multibillion dollar profits while they are gouging people who have mortgages. So what we need in Australia is a government that is prepared to step up and respond to these massive pressures facing millions of Australians and millions of Australian families. The first thing Labor should do—

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Your time has expired, Senator McKim.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh—

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You were just getting started! Senator Reynolds.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened with great interest to Senator Sheldon speaking on this, and even though this is about the cost of living, real wages and interest rate hikes, he couldn't utter a single one of those words. Let me share with those opposite what in 18 months the government has done to this nation's economy and to the workers Senator Sheldon professes to be so supportive of. Real household gross disposable income per capita, per Australian, is back this year 5.1 per cent. It has gone backwards over five per cent, and that is the worst performance by this hopefully one-term government—because people aren't going to be able to afford this mob too much longer—in the OECD. When we left government, pretty much every OECD indicator post COVID was at the top or almost at the top. And in 18 months you've managed to plunge workers into a cost-of-living crisis.

On this side let us talk about what those opposite cannot bear to mention anymore. What have they done? As Senator Hughes said, the Prime Minister laid out his goals just before the last election. He said Australians would be hit with a triple whammy of skyrocketing costs of essentials, falling wages and interest rate hikes. Well, guess what? That has all come true under this Prime Minister. If only he spent less time worrying about truth and treaty T-shirts and jetting overseas and his dance moves in the Pacific, if only he were here to look after and oversee his Treasurer, who is absolutely sending this country backwards at a rapid rate of knots. What won't they talk about? Let's talk about some of the facts.

Interest rates under this Labor government are at their highest since 2011. Unsurprisingly, guess who was in government at that point? Those opposite were in government. A family with a $750,000 mortgage under this government is now $24,000 a year worse off with extra mortgage repayments. That's an extra thousand dollars per fortnight that hundreds of thousands of families now have to find.

As if that were not bad enough for families, the price of food is up 8.2 per cent. The price of fuel is up 7.2 per cent this quarter alone. The cost of electricity is up 18.2 per cent and the cost of gas is up 28 per cent. And, under this mob, productivity has fallen by 6½ per cent in less than 15 months. As those on this side of the chamber know, when productivity falls, inflation goes up, putting pressure on the economy, and, yes, interest rates keep rising.

What we have seen today is more shame on those opposite. The Rental Affordability Index from National Shelter and SGS Economics & Planning shows that renters in each capital city are worse off than they were before the pandemic. That is appalling. Not only can Australians not find a house to rent anymore; many people cannot afford their mortgage and are increasingly making decisions: Do they fill up the car, do they pay their insurance or do they go without food? Do they give up on their mortgage? That is all under the Labor Party, in less than 18 months.

As a senator for Western Australia, I'm here with two great Western Australian Senate colleagues. We've been going out and talking to Western Australians, and I can tell you—

As Senator O'Sullivan said, they are hurting. We visited Foodbank, which has had a 50 per cent increase in the number of people coming on a daily basis. The majority of them are double-income families who cannot afford their mortgage and food anymore. We've heard from Anglicare WA during the Senate cost-of-living inquiry. In January, for example, the service received 3,752 calls for support, which was a 52 per cent increase in one single month. People are hurting under this mob.

Not only, in Western Australia, has the Prime Minister bungled and let 50 people—murderers and rapists—loose in Perth, but they cannot— (Time expired)

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator O'Neill.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Acting Deputy President Grogan. Can I thank you for taking the chair so I'm able to participate in this afternoon's matter of public importance discussion.

Cost of living is something the Albanese government have always taken very seriously, and we are more than up for the task of ensuring that Australians can manage the onslaught of the global economic headwinds that face us. We will make sure that Australia comes out of this situation more financially and fiscally secure. Members of the Liberal and National parties have a very self-indulgent perspective. They think that because they're antiworker they're somehow the superior economic managers. That could not be further from the truth. In the Labor government we have a very robust mix of workers, business owners, economists, unionists and individuals who truly do understand the reality of what it's like to count every dollar and every cent. We've got a diverse caucus. The member for Fenner, a former ANU economics professor, provides excellent expertise that's both wise and well founded. My friend on the coast the member for Hunter, a five-time Olympian and Commonwealth Games medallist, worked as a coalminer and as a manager for a small to medium enterprise in the mining business. The Deputy Prime Minister, the member for Corio, a strong statesman and local member, has experience as a legal officer at the Transport Workers Union and as Assistant Secretary of the ACTU. Anthony Albanese, Australia's 31st Prime Minister, grew up in council housing with his mother, a single parent who was solely dependent on the pension, before going on to study economics at Sydney uni. You don't forget the things that you know from the world. We understand; we absolutely understand.

I know a thing or two about hard work and counting every dollar and cent that's spent. I was born to Irish immigrant parents in Western Sydney. My mum worked in a factory and my dad was driving machinery on the Warringah Freeway. When I was born we ended up living in a caravan in a family friend's backyard so they could save and get themselves ahead. By the age of nine I was changing my siblings' nappies, and by 11 I was doing the bookkeeping for my father and mother's family business. We worked hard, but we built a secure life, and there were times when it was tough. Senator Hughes, the long-term political staffer turned senator, when I say that I know that people are doing it tough, I really mean it, and so do all my Labor colleagues. We deeply understand. We know the challenges Australians are facing.

The reductionist dogma that we're getting from the LNP is both unhelpful and confused. In the same breath the LNP claim that the Albanese government are not doing enough to support working Australians doing it tough, yet the shadow Treasurer, Mr Angus Taylor, also wants the government to cut the spending, presumably starting first with Medicare, then education, then aged care. Our Medicare reforms are helping 11.6 million Australians to get to see a doctor when they need it and to get them into urgent care and not have to wait at an emergency ward. When you can't afford to see the doctor, there are real repercussions. We understand. They wreck Medicare; we have to rebuild it every time we come in. That is taking care of the people of this nation, because health matters. The shadow Treasurer directly advocated for spending cuts on 9 May 2023.

Those opposite are so devoid of talent after the teal wave swept most of the sensible members out to sea, leaving only a Morrison inspired marketing-agency shell of the party in their wake. They will say anything and everything in a rampant attempt to find some relevancy. But Australians have good memories. Australians remember the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison standing against Labor's pledge to increase the minimum wage by $1 an hour. That's how much the LNP care about working Australians. Australians remember the shadow Treasurer's and Senator Hughes's opposition to increasing bulk billing. Australians remember the member for Hume's and Senator Hughes's opposition to increasing the eligibility of the single parenting payment. To the member for Hume and Senator Hughes, I provide a fee-free piece of advice about practical action: helping single mothers is good economics. It's good for Australia. It's also the right thing to do, and it's helping people who are under stress. Expanding the eligibility of the single parenting payment for the youngest child from being eight to 14 provides more opportunities to save and live a secure life. It's not just about supporting the parents; it's about supporting the children too. We understand. Labor won't leave Australians hanging— (Time expired)

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

As the servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I agree with this matter of public importance from Senator Hughes. I'm not sure about 'triple whammy'. Perhaps a more appropriate term is a perfect storm of government incompetence and callousness. Food essentials are dearer because successive Liberal-National and Labor-Greens governments have taken water off farmers to give to kill trees, driving up the price of irrigation water and, with them, the price of food. Profiteering from Coles and Woolworths is not helping. Both have just booked record profits on behalf of their foreign owners, including BlackRock and Vanguard. Real wages are falling—five per cent in the last year alone. Yet the inflation we're currently experiencing is on the heads of the previous Liberal government, who, along with Labor, Greens and teals, destroyed the economy to control people and transfer wealth during COVID, in the process printing so much money that inflation was the inevitable result, as I said over and over across 2021 and 2022.

Interest rates were always going to rise from an artificial low of 0.1 per cent. The reason they've risen so quickly and so high is on both sides of this chamber. The largest single cause of our economic woes is the net zero fairytale. Today even the Bank of England accepts that net zero is inflationary. Former Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello and Australia's Reserve Bank accept that net zero is inflationary. When baseload power is replaced by fairytale weather-dependent power, energy costs rise. The sun and the wind are free, true. The materials to capture that very low density energy are not. That's why the cost per unit of energy is so high. Australians are seeing the result of net zero in their mortgages or rent payments, at the shops and in their utility bills. Money doesn't go far enough to pay for the net zero fairytale, yet this government continues down that path regardless, despite the financial suffering this is causing everyday Australians—callous behaviour indeed.

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

I too rise to speak on this matter of public importance. First of all, as I often have to do in this place, I have to set the record straight for those listening in the gallery or on the broadcast or reading the Hansard in a few days. Real wages increased under the last coalition government. You wouldn't know that if you just listened to what the Labor Party said, because they don't speak the truth. Real wages grew under the last coalition government, and real wages are plummeting under this Labor government. Real wages are plummeting, at a time when costs for families and businesses are skyrocketing. I could table information to show that this is a fact. It is a fact. It's in the ABS statistics. No-one can actually doubt what I am saying. But I don't need to table the information, because every family out there who is listening to this knows it. They know it when they get their pay cheque at the end of the two weeks. They know it when they go to the grocery store to buy the basket of groceries that used to cost them $200 and now costs them $250, if they're lucky. They know it when they go to the petrol station and fill up. Where they used to fill their tank to the brim, they now have to stop halfway because they have to watch their pennies. They know it when they see the money come out of their account every month or every two weeks on their mortgage repayments, which for an average mortgage holder in this country have gone up anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 a year.

So, when they hear the Labor Party trot out their trite lines about how they've done this, that and the other to assist with the cost of living, every Australian family listening knows that what they have done has done nothing to improve the lives and livelihoods of Australian families. It has done nothing to address the serious cost pressures that small business in this country is under. It has done nothing to alleviate the pain that so many families are feeling in having to make very tough decisions about whether to send their kids to the weekend sport, whether to think about that holiday over the Christmas period, whether they have to perhaps do more hours at work and miss out on time with their kids. These are the difficult decisions that Australian families are having to make.

I find it ironic. I looked back through the Hansardtranscript just before giving this speech. It is now 14 months ago—and I think my good friend Senator O'Sullivan was actually in the chamber at that time too—that I gave a speech, a little bit tongue in cheek, where I said, thinking back to that great television show The West Wing, that Labor had a secret plan to fight inflation. I think you were here for that speech, Senator O'Sullivan. That was 14 months ago, well over a year ago. 'A secret plan to fight inflation'—I said it a little bit tongue in cheek. I thought it was so secret because Labor weren't telling us what their plan was. And here we are 14 months later, and I think the Australian public would have every right to think that that plan is still secret, because they're not seeing it. They're not seeing any plan from this Labor government to tackle the very serious challenges that are facing Australian small businesses and Australian families every time they go to the grocery store, every time they go to fill up their car with petrol, every time they think about a little bit extra for their kids, every time they look at the basket of goods they're going to buy this week and think, 'What do we have to leave out?' These pressures are real. They're not something that those on this side have magically made up. These are real pressures on real Australians.

All governments need to be able to make tough decisions. That's what government is all about. But all this government seems to want to do is to look back to the past, to throw hand grenades across the chamber, to blame everything on the coalition, when in fact they've now delivered two budgets. They're the ones with their hands on the levers of power. They're the ones who have to make the tough decisions about expenditure—and they can't. They've shown that now. Two times, at least, the Reserve Bank have paused interest rate rises and looked at this government, looked at the settings in the economy, and said, 'Where are we going next? Do we raise interest rates or do we stay on hold?' And twice now—once with this government's last budget—the Reserve Bank have paused, waited and then raised interest rates.

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

The discussion on the matter of public importance has concluded.