David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

I'd like to start off with the question from Senator Hume to Minister Wong about inflation, where Senator Hume highlighted that interest rates remain at a 12-year high, core inflation is now on the rise again at 4.4 per cent, rents have gone up and the price of food, housing, electricity and insurance has gone up. Some of those prices have gone up to the extent that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said that some 273,337 households were struggling to pay their electricity bills, which is a rise of 43,000 from the same period last year. That's an 18 per cent increase in the number of Australians who are falling over a financial cliff because of the policies of this government.

What does the government do? We heard in the response today about bill relief that they were providing and about that, if it weren't for their measures, Australians would be paying more. That's like saying we've put a six-inch little step at the bottom of a cliff and you would have fallen further if it weren't for our intervention. What Australians really want is not a bandaid. They want a long-term plan that won't just give us better figures ahead of the next election. To go back to Abraham Lincoln, he believed a politician looks at just the next election and a statesman looks at the next generation. We should be looking at how we put in place a long-term plan that will benefit Australia by having sustainable, cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy into the future. Those opposite, in the middle of that discussion around the impact of inflation—including, at the core of it, rising electricity costs—claimed that the coalition's plan is going to be the most expensive form of electricity, but what they don't tell you is that their own plan, Mr Albanese's plan, to have a system which is completely reliant on renewable energy, is actually going to be the most expensive. That's not my claim; that's the conclusion of a study done by the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland and Princeton University called Net Zero Australia. They highlight that, in the short term, it'll be some $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion to have a renewables based system put in place and, by 2060, some $7 trillion to $9 trillion.

What does that look like in the future? If you search 'renewable energy' in South Australia, my home state, you'll see claim after claim about the fact that South Australia is leading the transition in terms of energy, and yet South Australia has some of the highest power prices in the world—and certainly some of the highest here in Australia. Let me give you a comparison. In Ontario, a province in Canada, they're paying 14c per kilowatt hour. In Korea, they pay around 16c per kilowatt hour. In South Australia, we pay 45.54c per kilowatt—a massive increase. What are some of the things that Ontario and Korea have in common? In Korea, they have a nuclear industry, and that has brought power prices down. In Ontario, 60 per cent of their energy comes from nuclear generation, and they pay 14c versus South Australia's 45c per kilowatt hour. But the thing that those opposite won't acknowledge is not only how expensive their renewables-only plan is to achieve—the fact that it's on a trajectory to ever-increasing power prices, which is putting people over the cliff—but also the reality forecast by people like the International Energy Agency in the OECD that nuclear is better. Also, the experience of Finland, which in April this year opened up the OL3 nuclear plant, was that as soon as that came online there was a reduction of 75 per cent in their power prices.

So the theory of expert bodies like the IEA and OECD says that the long-term plan that will give us cleaner, cheaper, more consistent power is nuclear, and the lived experience of places like Ontario, Korea and Finland highlight that that is the way to get cleaner, cheaper and more consistent power for Australians.

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

In our past two years in office, this government has been focused on putting downward pressure on inflation. We've been focused on delivering cost-of-living relief.

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

The feather effect—not working.

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

We've been focused, Senator Smith, on creating jobs—over 880,000 of them—and getting wages moving again after a decade in which those opposite embraced low wages as a deliberate design feature of your economy. Those are the things that we have been focused on: downward pressure on inflation, cost-of-living relief, creating jobs and getting wages moving. It's a good thing, at five minutes past five on the last sitting day of this last sitting week of the session, that we're focused now on those things that Australians care about.

What Australians can see from our government is two years of budget management designed to put downward pressure on inflation: We are the government that has delivered two surpluses back to back, not those opposite. That is because we've made the hard decisions about how to return revenue to the budget bottom line, and we've done that exercising fiscal constraint in line with the RBA's monetary policy. What we have been focused on is putting downward pressure on inflation through our tight fiscal management of the budget.

Of course, we have been focused on providing cost-of-living relief too. We know that Australians are doing it tough out there. We know the inflation challenge is real here in Australia, just as it is around the world, and the cost-of-living measures that come into effect this week in Australia are going to make a huge difference to people's lives. Our tax cuts for 13.6 million Australians will make a huge difference to people's lives. An average of $1,800 a year is being returned to people to help them deal with the challenges that they face. It's over $3,000 for many families, along with the $300 energy rebate, which is really going to help people with their power bills this winter. It's $325 for small businesses. That energy bill relief is working in concert with the measures we've put in place to put downward pressure on energy prices, including capping prices, which those opposite rejected and tried to vote against.

The best thing that we can do to put downward pressure on energy bills is to get more of the cheapest energy into the grid, and that, far and away, is renewable energy, and all of those opposite know that. Instead, they've come to the parliament with a plan, developed, it seems, by the new Leader of the Opposition—and I know it's important to get people's names and titles right in this place. I think the appropriate title of the new Leader of the Opposition is the member for Maranoa, Mr Littleproud. I think that's the new Leader of the Opposition, who has apparently brought this nuclear plan to the coalition. This is a plan to raise your energy bills. That is what this is a plan to do. We know that nuclear is far and away the most expensive form of energy that there is and that this is a plan from those opposite to delay energy transition in this country by two decades and to then embrace the most expensive form of power that is out there. It is nuclear stupidity. That is what this policy is.

In addition to putting downward pressure on inflation, putting downward pressure on energy bills, getting cheaper renewable energy in the grid and providing cost-of-living relief with our tax cuts, which will make a huge difference to people's lives, what we on this side care about is creating jobs and getting wages moving, and that's exactly what we are doing.

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

Well, you belled the cat, didn't you, Senator Walsh? You really belled the cat when you talked about how it was 5.04 and you were finally talking about the cost of living, because what it is to this government is a political afterthought. It's the thing you get to once you've wasted two hours trying to amend a very reasonable motion from the opposition about Israel's right to defend itself—a motion that I'm very surprised anyone in this place would have questioned. Instead, the Labor Party, because of their own internal problems, have had to spend two hours trying to move an amendment to that motion. Then you come in here at five o'clock, when we finally get to take note of answers and, as an afterthought—like this government always treats the standard of living and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on real Australians as an afterthought—you start to talk about that now.

This government has completely failed to address the cost-of-living crisis. Its budgets have poured money into the economy, which every senior economist across Australia has said is inflationary. Labor close their eyes, block their ears, hold their nose and say, 'Oh, no. Our budget is putting downward pressure on inflation.' That is absolute nonsense, and no serious economist in the country has said that they think that your budgets are putting pressure on inflation, and it is inflation that is the standard-of-living killer in any economy. It is inflation that is making people poorer.

In the West Australian a few days ago, an article revealed that just one rate rise this year, a 25-basis-point rate rise, will wipe out the tax cut. That's it. Senator Smith, remind me: how many increases in interest rates have we had under this government? Is it 11, or are we up to 12?

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

Twelve.

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

Twelve! So your tax cut has already been wiped out by this government in decimating your standard of living through the increased costs you are paying on your mortgage, at the grocery store, on your electricity bills and at the petrol station. This Labor inflation is a cancer on the standard of living in this country. It is Labor's inflation. They tried to pretend for months and months that this was caused by international pressures, but now it is very clear that this is Labor's homegrown inflation. Just one interest rate rise will wipe out the benefits of this tax cut because Labor cannot control their budget. They cannot control their own spending. They have pushed billions of dollars into the economy through their last two budgets and, as a result, have been working counter to the efforts of the Reserve Bank of Australia, whose sole responsibility is to try to get inflation under control. But they are not the only ones who have that responsibility. That is their sole job, but it's also the job of the Australian government to care about inflation. It destroys the standard of living of real Australians.

Real Australian families are having to make the tough choices about whether they can still do school sport on the weekend, whether they can pay for the materials their children need at school or whether they can fill up the car this week. People are having to make very, very difficult choices. The impact on small business of high inflation and high interest rates is excruciating. If those opposite ever talked to small-business people, which I doubt they do, they would know that the combination of the increasing costs of their supplies and the impact of high interest rates on their overdrafts, mortgages and business loans is having an absolutely devastating effect on the standard of living of small-business owners right across this country.

This is a government to whom the cost-of-living crisis and the decimation of people's standard of living are an afterthought. It's something they think about at five o'clock at night after they have been fighting their ideological wars the rest of the day.

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

I have just ticked over seven hours sitting in this chamber today, for a variety of reasons. What I have heard—

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

What do you think you've achieved?

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

Thank you for that interjection, Senator Smith. I am sure you think you're funny. What I have heard—and I'm hearing it again now—is an awful lot of disrespect for this chamber and how things operate.

We have seen a pretty disgraceful act this afternoon. We have the Greens political party, who only support Palestine, and we have the coalition, who only support Israel. There's no congruence here. The arguments going on over the last number of hours should, I think, cause everyone to spend a little bit of time reflecting deeply on how that played out. The bottom line for us over here in the Labor government is that we believe in peace. We believe in a two-state solution. An awful lot of the politics and the pointscoring that's gone on here is something that we should all be deeply, deeply ashamed of. This chamber is where we get to debate, but to debate you have to listen as well as put forward your view. I'm not sure we've seen a lot of that today.

But as we tick around to the last three-quarters of an hour of this sitting session, I will say that one of the things that is really important is how Australians are faring. We know that in the budget there were a whole bunch of really positive announcements. Those opposite have proven in the last 20 minutes that either they don't understand how finance and budgets work or they're actually just pointscoring and playing politics. I'm going with the second one, because I'm pretty sure some of them are actually quite intelligent. But that's just me feeling benevolent on a Thursday afternoon.

This week—the first week of July, the new financial year—we have seen five different types of cost-of-living help coming from the May budget, one being a tax cut for every taxpayer, one being energy bill relief for every household and one being cheaper medicines, as well as a pay rise for millions of workers on award wages and two extra weeks of paid parental leave. In the Labor government, we are about structural reform that will last the distance, not a sugar hit—not a couple of hundred bucks in people's pockets on 1 July in the hope that they'll vote for you next time. Our task, and one we take very seriously, is structural change and building the budget to a stronger position into the future—and that's what we're doing, and that is how we are going to move forward.

The other thing that builds into that, very strongly, is our Future Made in Australia, where we are looking at investing in those industries of the future so that we can see Australia getting stronger, our economy getting stronger, more and more opportunities for people to get good, well-paying jobs in industries that they really want to work in that they can be proud of, as we work together as a nation to build a sustainable future that will provide opportunities for our children and our grandchildren.

I know for a fact that in Port Augusta, a region where I spend quite a lot of time, there are so many fantastic opportunities in green steel, in green cement. These aren't just pipedreams; these are things for which there are tangible plans in place, things where there are tangible opportunities that are being brought forward by the South Australian government and the amazing councils of the Spencer Gulf region. They've got excellent ideas to capture the ideas and the vision that the Albanese Labor government is putting forward to the country. That is being embraced, as they know the benefits of making structural change in our budgets, building our industry for the future, having more opportunities for our kids, and having more opportunities for people to build strong careers where they can earn better wages and live in a better, more robust, sustainable nation. (Time expired)

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

The thought that is top of mind for every Australian today is not the welfare of Julian Assange, not the performance of President Joe Biden in his most recent presidential debate. After tomorrow, it won't even be Senator Fatima Payman from Western Australia. The matter that is top of mind for every Australian at the moment is the cost of living. And Australians who voted for Prime Minister Albanese and who voted for Dr Jim Chalmers, the Treasurer, are asking themselves: Why is it that Labor is making them poorer? Why is it that Labor is hurting working families like theirs? And why is it that the government can only offer up excuses when asked to explain why interest rates are crippling household budgets, why inflation hasn't come under control and why the prices of households' weekly and monthly family shopping lists have got greater and greater? The answer to those questions is very simple. When the RBA meets, it sits down and asks itself one question: is the government managing the economy well? And if the RBA decides that the government is not managing the economy well, what does the RBA do? It puts up interest rates.

Over the two-and-a-bit years since May 2022, when the RBA has met, sat down and judged the performance of the government in managing the economy, it has said the government is doing a bad job, and interest rates have gone up, not once but 12 times. That's the cumulative impact that is now weighing heavily on the minds of Australian households. There are only two dates in the next six weeks that Australians need to think about and prepare themselves for. The first date is 31 July. That is when the June-quarter inflation rate gets revealed. Jim Chalmers boldly said on the eve of the budget that he would bring down inflation. Well, we'll soon know whether or not Dr Chalmers has been able to do that, on 31 July. What is the second date that is most important?

It's 6 August—thank you very much, Senator Ayres. You should have that etched in your diary, because that is the next date when the RBA will judge the performance of the government. It's 6 August. There's a third date, and what is that? That date will probably be 30 November or 7 December, when Anthony Albanese will take this country to an election, asking them to vote on his performance as an economic manager. Anthony Albanese is not going to let Australians—

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Polley.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd just remind my colleague on the other side to use the Prime Minister's title. He knows that's within the standing orders.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Smith, please use the appropriate title.

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is often called the chief wrecker of the Australian economy, and I think that is unfair. He's the co-chief wrecker, because he joins with Dr Jim Chalmers in wrecking the Australian economy.

Let's be clear about this. If Australians go to a poll later this year, as is speculated, it's because Anthony Albanese wants to pull the wool over the eyes of hardworking Australian families who have experienced probably one of the worst cost-of-living crises that many of them can remember. Mr Albanese says he wants to go for the full term, to May 2025. That's not true. Mr Anthony Albanese and Dr Chalmers know that, if he waits for an election in May next year, the financial burden that Australian families are forced to endure will go for another six months. The Prime Minister can't afford to have Australian families weighted down, burdened, by a cost-of-living crisis that goes to May 2025, because he knows that Australians will reject him, reject Dr Chalmers and vote down Labor's economic plan and economic performance. The most important dates in the next six months are 31 July, 6 August and possibly 7 December.

Question agreed to.