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

Australians are alert and alarmed. They are alert to the ubiquitous cost-of-living pressures that are falling across Australian families and Australian businesses. They are alarmed because the government has no real plan to address cost-of-living pressures to bring inflation and interest rates down.

Those cost-of-living pressures are now turning into a cost-of-doing-business crisis in our country. Just this week ASIC, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, reported that 11,000 Australian businesses had gone into insolvency over the last 12 months. In my home state of Western Australia, almost 1,100 businesses went into insolvency. In the last June quarter that figure was 308 companies going into insolvency in Western Australia. Think about that for a second: 308 companies in just one quarter. That is one every seven hours in Western Australia going out of business because Labor has lost control of our economy.

This is added to because we also know that Australians are now experiencing the largest collapse in their personal savings ratio that they have experienced for 16 years. The personal savings ratio of Australian households in our country is now just 0.9 per cent. That is the lowest figure in 16 years. Alert and alarmed: alert because the cost-of-living pressures are affecting everyone and alarmed because this Labor government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Dr Jim Chalmers, has no plan.