Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate notes Labor's high taxing, high spending 2024-25 Budget will make the lives of Australians harder by putting further pressure on inflation and keeping interest rates higher for longer.

We are now seeing the flow-on effects of Labor's high-spending, high-taxing budget that was brought down earlier this year, and the effects upon the Australian people are quite devastating. I want to read some statistics. These are the impacts of inflation that are flowing through our economy. Since the last election, the cost of health care has gone up 10.5 per cent, the cost of education has gone up 11.2 per cent, the cost of food has gone up 12.3 per cent and the cost of housing has gone up 13.1 per cent. I'll be saying something further about housing shortly. Rent has gone up 16.3 per cent—again, I'll be providing some further details in that regard shortly. Finance and insurance have gone up 17.3 percent. The price of gas, in a country which is blessed with plentiful supplies—if we could only get it to market—has gone up 33.8 per cent since the last election. These numbers are quite devastating and they have real-world impacts upon my constituents in the state of Queensland who are doing it tough, doing it really tough, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. These consequences are flowing from a big taxing, big spending government and that is what the final budget outcome that has just been released has indicated. Compared to before the election, Labor has raised $104 billion in additional income—that is, $104 billion in additional taxes was raised by the Albanese Labor government since the last election—and that includes $43 billion of higher taxes on households and $54 billion of higher taxes on businesses contributing to that $104 billion figure.

The other question raised is: how is it sustainable? Even with those high revenue numbers in additional tax, spending is growing faster as a percentage of GDP than taxes. So even with an extra $104 billion of receipts, including an extra $43 billion in household taxes and an extra $54 billion in business taxes, the government is spending at an even faster rate than it is raising the additional taxes, with spending growing faster as a percentage of GDP than tax receipts. Listen to these figures: as a percentage of GDP in real terms, spending has grown by 2.9 per cent compared to tax receipts at 0.2 per cent of GDP. Taxes are increasing on both households and businesses but, at the same time, spending is increasing even further. It is not sustainable. Let's be honest here. The government's budget is only supported by record-high commodity prices. When those commodity prices weaken and those tax receipts, especially corporate tax receipts, start to decrease, the spending is locked in and that means a structural deficit in the medium to longer term and that is gravely concerning, extremely concerning.

I want to talk about the cost of rents. Since the last election, national median weekly rents have increased by 23 per cent from $512 to $632 a week. That equates to an extra $6,240 a year. Since the last election, just to pay your rent is now an extra $6,240 a year. The impact of the government policies—higher interest rates, higher taxing—is $6,240 a year in extra rent.

My office is located in the outer urban area in Queensland, in a place called Springfield, which is in the Ipswich City Council area. I want to talk to you about the increase in rents in my local area. This is based on research I got the Parliamentary Library to do and it is quite staggering. There are a lot of battlers who live in my region of Ipswich doing it tough in the cost-of-living crisis, so I did some research to see how much the rent has increased in the greater Ipswich region. For a one-bedroom flat in Ipswich, the cost of renting that in June 2022 was $265 a week but that has now increased in the space of two years to $350 a week, an increase of $85 a week, 14.9 per cent, or $4,420 a year extra in rent. The rent for a basic minimal standard of living, a one-bedroom flat in my area of Ipswich where my office is located, increased by $4,420 in the two years since the last election. That's a staggering increase. Senator Roberts knows the area of Ipswich very well, and he'll know the demographics of that area. There are a lot of battlers. If you have a one-bedroom flat in Ipswich, you are a battler and the property you rent has gone up by $4,420 a year. Looking down these figures, a two-bedroom apartment's cost per year has gone up by $3,640. A three-bedroom apartment has gone up $5,200. A two-bedroom house has gone up $5,200.

If you have a larger family, for a three-bedroom house in Ipswich the average rent has gone up by $5,720 a year. For an average three-bedroom house in my area of Ipswich, where my office is located, rent has gone up by $5,720 a year. That is an astronomical amount. A four-bedroom house has gone up by the same amount. For a three-bedroom townhouse the cost to rent over the year has gone up by $130 a week. That's an average change of 16.2 per cent, which is $6,760. There were 195 tenancies for a three-bedroom townhouse in the Ipswich and Somerset local government authority region commencing on the June quarter 2024. Those tenants, those families, will be $6,760, after tax, worse off as a result of the increase in those rents. These are astronomical figures.

In the Somerset local government authority region, which is also in the federal seat of Blair and which I am duty senator for, the cost of the rent for a three-bedroom house has gone up by $3,640 a year. This is after-tax income. The cost of a four-bedroom house has gone up by $6,760 a year in rent. These are absolutely astronomical figures and are deeply concerning. We have people in my Ipswich region who are living in parks because they can't afford to pay these increases in rent, which, as I've outlined, are up to $6,760 a year greater than what they were.

Things are bad enough as they are. We have to ask ourselves the question: how much worse will they be if the Labor government after the next election are a minority government and then effectively only hold government with the support of the Greens? How much worse would they be? I have previously spoken in this place with respect to the spending ideas which the Greens have which are simply on another planet—absolutely bonkers. The Greens' proposals, to use a detailed economic term, are bonkers! The Greens' spending ideas are absolutely off the planet.

We are actually seeing in the context of the Queensland state election at the moment what the Greens' ideas are with respect to spending in my home state of Queensland. I live in a beautiful part of the world, in Brisbane, where we have one of the oldest golf clubs, the Brisbane Golf Club. It was established some 128 years ago. The Greens actually propose to nationalise, confiscate and appropriate this golf club. That is what the Greens are taking to the next election. The Greens want to appropriate, confiscate and nationalise the Brisbane Golf Club. It's like Venezuela. This is a golf club with 1,600 members and a history going back 128 years. They're Australian leaders in terms of supporting women in golf. In fact, they got awarded the 2023 Visionary of the Year golf club award in 2023 from Golf Australia for everything they are doing with respect to promoting the participation of women in golf. The Greens want to nationalise it. They want to appropriate this golf club. I'll quote from the Greens' Venezuelan-like manifesto. This is how they described this golf club with 128 years of history. They said they want to:

Buy back the giant 60ha golf course in Yeerongpilly/Rocklea and establish a 'New Rocks Riverside' public park with outdoor water play and playgrounds, BBQ areas, flood resilience and biodiversity areas …

This is a golf club that's been in existence for over 120 years and has over 1,600 members, and the Greens want to go in there and confiscate it, nationalise it—

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

Steal it!

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

steal it, as Senator Roberts says. This is quite extraordinary! Have you actually consulted the members of the golf club on this crazy Greens extreme proposal to nationalise, appropriate and confiscate their golf club? Did you actually consult them? Have you raised this crazy idea to confiscate this golf club? Did you actually talk to the members of the golf club before you put out this manifesto, this Greens radical extreme manifesto, to nationalise, appropriate and confiscate their golf club? Golfers of Australia beware: the Greens are coming after you. The Greens are coming after your golf clubs. They're coming after your golf club itself!

This is 128 years of history in my region of Queensland, and the Greens have the gall to introduce this policy to seek election in my own district on a platform that involves the confiscation of the golf club with 1,600 members. It's been going for 128 years, and the Greens want to nationalise it—absolutely extraordinary stuff. I say to the Greens' candidate: have you consulted the members of the Brisbane Golf Club about this proposal? Did you at least have the courtesy to tell them you want to steal their golf club? Did you actually have any consultation with them? 128 years of history—it's actually a heritage listed golf club. This is a world-leading golf club in terms of promoting women's participation in golf, and the Greens want to come and convert it to a riverside public park. It's the—

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Which club?

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll take that interjection, Senator Cadell. It's the Brisbane Golf Club, a beautiful golf club. It could be challenging for you, Senator Cadell! I'm not sure. I haven't played a round of golf with you, but I can I tell you it's a wonderful environment, and it is just outrageous that the extreme radical Greens in Queensland want to confiscate, nationalise, appropriate—whatever you want to call it—the Brisbane Golf Club and haven't even bothered to consult the 1,600 members of this golf club. Shame on you, Greens.

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

Bracket creep! Labor Party budgets rely on bracket creep. Liberal Party budgets rely on bracket creep. Bracket creep is the government's dirty little secret, a hidden stealth tax. Inflation means Labor will quietly pocket tens of billions of dollars in extra taxes by simply doing nothing. As wages increase with inflation, taxpayers go up into higher tax brackets, paying higher tax rates, and no-one says a thing. We in One Nation are going to say something—again. We've been exposing this since this debate started, and we will fix it with an amendment.

Bracket creep is a stealth tax. Due to inflation, as wages increase, Australians move into higher tax brackets, while being able to buy only the same things with less money because, in the higher bracket, we pay more tax. Taxpayers effectively have less to spend on groceries and have less disposable income. Bracket creep amounts to a secret tax that the government keeps collecting to pay for their pet projects of questionable benefit. If the Liberals and Labor, the uniparty, want to increase taxes, they should put it in a bill, take it to an election and be honest with all Australians rather than quietly relying on bracket creep to secretly plug their budget holes and ratchet up income tax receipts.

Bracket creep should have been fixed a decade ago. Analysis from the Parliamentary Budget Office shows that, over the last decade, because of bracket creep Australians have had to pay an extra $44 billion that was stolen deceitfully. But shh! 'Don't tell the people because we didn't take the action to fix this 10 years ago.' Just over the next four years, bracket creep will mean Australians also pay an extra $38 billion in taxes—$38 billion extra! Labor told us that they were giving us a tax cut. Now you can see the truth; it's not a tax cut. If the government gets inflation under control, fixing bracket creep won't cost the budget anything. Australians don't deserve to pay for inflation twice because of government mistakes, and the budget shouldn't benefit from out-of-control inflation.

This is how you are paying twice: firstly, through inflation, because of an out-of-control government there are higher prices; and, secondly, by being lifted into higher tax brackets because of the higher wages that come with inflation, you have less spending power and less money overall.

The Liberals have made many comments about the scourge of bracket creep. This is your opportunity to fix it, once and for all. I urge all senators to stop the stealth taxation increases. How? Simply index the tax thresholds, the tax brackets. If Labor need any suggestions on areas of spending to fix so they don't have to keep secretly stealing more from Australians, they can consult One Nation's extensive network at Senate estimates for a few tips. Actually, we have lots of tips. We've exposed so much: the flawed $65 billion Hunter frigate program that Labor fiddled with and didn't cancel, the NDIS being on track to cost $100 billion every year, and up to $8 billion a year in Medicare fraud. They're all good places to start.

The Albanese government's outrageously high, or I should say 'record high and increasing', immigration intake is fuelling huge increases in rent and house prices. By the way, on the amendment I moved to Labor's so-called tax cut bill in this place few months ago, Senator Hume stood up on behalf of the Liberal Party and said that they agree with ending bracket creep—but not now. I think it was Senator Gallagher, the finance minister, who stated Labor's position as basically identical. They would 'love to cut out bracket creep'—but not now. A few weeks later, Liberal Senator Dave Sharma, in his first Senate speech, stated he has a goal of ending bracket creep, yet, a few weeks earlier, he had voted against it.

Let me get back to the second point. The Albanese government's outrageously high, record high and increasing, immigration intake is fuelling huge demand on rent and house prices. Rents, in the last five years, have gone up 52 per cent. Before COVID, the number of temporary visa holders in the country was around 2.3 million people. As at the end of July 2024, that number is now 2.8 million—more than 10 per cent of our population. These are hard numbers and facts, yet the government has continued to lie, claiming, 'We're just catching up on immigration.' Oh, really? We haven't just caught up; we've blown the record out of the water. We're nearly half a million people above the record. Using the average household size of 2½ people per house implies a need for more than 200,000 houses just to cater for new arrivals.

Last year, the Albanese government promised to crack down on the level immigration, yet there were 335,000 net arrivals in the first seven months of 2024. That's 15,000 people more than the same time the previous year. And that was a record, so we've got a new record. This is a huge reason why we're in a housing crisis, with rents skyrocketing and housing prices reaching new records, yet the government won't say a word about it. They're quiet, just like on the stealth tax and bracket creep.

The person responsible for this immigration program, Minister Clare O'Neil, has been now appointed as Labor's Minister for Housing. What a joke. The person who created the problem is now in charge of solving the problem. One Nation's proposal is practical common sense based on real-world data. Simply return the number of temporary visa holders in the country to pre-COVID levels, and that would immediately free up 200,000 houses. From there, immigration would be capped at the level for which Australia can build housing and infrastructure to cater for new arrivals.

In the middle of a housing catastrophe, there are hundreds of Queenslanders in cities—Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Maryborough, Bundaberg, Ipswich, parts of the Scenic Rim, the Gold Coast and Beaudesert—who are homeless, sleeping in cars. Working families are going home in the evening after work to see if their kids are still there. Where do they shower? Where do they toilet? We need to get houses for people currently sleeping under bridges, in cars, in tents and in caravans before we allow more new arrivals into our country. We must put Australians first, and we must put Australians in houses first.

What about demand for houses and foreign ownership? To reduce demand and open up more housing supply, One Nation would ban foreign ownership of residential property. Australians are banned from buying a house in China, yet China is the largest foreign buyer of real estate in Australia. A single real estate agent in Sydney sold $135 million in property to Chinese buyers in just six months. New Zealand and Canada, similar countries to ours, recently banned foreign ownership of housing. Putting Australians first is simple, clear and practical. Until we get Australian citizens out of tents and cars and into houses, we shouldn't be letting foreigners buy residential property. Under our proposal foreign owners would have to sell to an Australian buyer. If the foreign owners fail to sell in two years, the house would be subject to government auctions open to first home buyers only in the first round and, in the second round, to other Australians. All this is possible and can be done. It just takes truthful politicians with the guts and political will to put Australians first.

One Nation would ditch Labor's half-baked housing schemes, including its so-called Help to Buy scheme and the Housing Australia Future Fund. Both add huge numbers of bureaucrats, who do not build houses. We would replace the bureaucrats with a new program called the people's mortgage scheme, offering government issued mortgages at five per cent fixed interest for 25 years. There would be no variable, changing interest rate. They would be cheaper than current mortgages from a bank, with minimal risk to the taxpayer thanks to the long-term, fixed nature. Forget the government owning your home under Labor's Help to Buy. Instead, One Nation will make sure the government helps you own your own home in full.

Many first home buyers can't get a loan because of HECS debts, and that raises another point. Under One Nation's people's mortgage scheme, first home buyers can roll their HECS debt into the mortgage to pay it off. That will give them access to a mortgage that they can't get anywhere else and let them start buying their house early, over the years making that purchase of the house far cheaper, with lower interest.

I'll now go to the supply side. All these policies must go hand in hand with huge improvements to the supply of housing. We need to build more houses, so we'll need to review construction codes and the undersupply of materials. Builders are currently drowning in a sea of red tape. Every single new home must be built to an NDIS silver level standard. Construction consultants estimate this requirement alone adds $50,000 to the cost of a new dwelling. We should make efforts to take care of our severely disabled, yet we cannot increase the cost of every new home by $50,000 while we're in an affordability crisis and a housing shortage. The National Construction Code must be simplified so that tradies can get on with the job. We need valued tradies and builders spending more time swinging a hammer than flipping through paperwork.

Next, I'll go to supply and materials. One Nation would apply a three-year holiday for the goods and services tax, charged currently on building materials. We need more houses built. Government should not be standing in the way of someone building their first house because the government wants to collect GST on the transaction. We need to open up our timber supplies. Australia is a huge continent and has abundant timber reserves. Despite this, we're in the unbelievable and ridiculous situation of needing to import timber from countries with environmental standards below ours. The Greens and Labor want to gut our timber industry yet bring more migrants into Australia in record numbers. A sustainable timber industry is Australia's prime renewable resource. It literally grows back every year. One Nation supports our timber industry to ensure we have the supplies to build houses sourced right here in our country. There are other details and initiatives in our comprehensive, practical and proven immigration and housing policies which will have a major impact on reducing the cost of living and government debt.

Foreign multinationals pay little or no company tax, due to choosing to adopt globalist policies under both the Liberal and the Labor parties. Foreign ownership is very high—90 per cent of Australia's largest companies are foreign owned and, since 1953, have paid little or no company tax, according to the former deputy commissioner of taxation Jim Killaly—due to the Liberal and Labor party governments choosing to adopt globalist policies. In housing there is record and rising immigration due to both parties choosing to adopt globalist policies. We have record and rising energy prices—the fundamental key to economic productivity and our competitive advantage. Why are they rising? Because the Liberal and Labor parties are choosing to adopt globalist policies.

I've said it before: under Liberal-Labor uniparty governance over many decades, our parliament has ceded sovereignty and governance to unelected and unaccountable parasitic globalist entities like the United Nations, the United Nations World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum. It has ceded to unelected, unaccountable, parasitic global wealth funds like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and First State.

I thank Senator Scarr for his motion and for the opportunity to speak. This is an essential topic for all Australians and all Queenslanders. Instead of ceding sovereignty to foreign corporations and unelected foreign bodies, One Nation policies work to a very simple vision: to restore our country so Australians abound and thrive. Abundance is not a dirty word. We have one flag, we are one community and we are One Nation.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a contribution in relation to Senator Scarr's general business motion. What Senator Scarr is trying to do here is to talk about the government's failure on housing. The next election, which I imagine will be next year, will be an election where the Australian people have a smorgasbord of policy options to choose from on housing. And I think that if people look at any of the information out there they will see that, particularly for under-40s, this is the really big-ticket item. I guess it's good that people have choice and have that smorgasbord. What is bad is that this government has now wasted 2½ years on shifting the Australian dream further and further away for the average worker.

When you work through the supply and demand elements here, it is pretty obvious that if we continue with this government in any form we will never restore the Australian dream, which is basically the idea that the average worker on an average income can buy a house where they want to. That's basically the idea that is being lost now. The average worker cannot buy a house where they want in most cases, because the average house is priced at multiple times their income.

Let's look at the supply issue. We hear the government talking in question time about all their great supply policies, but, ultimately, the numbers don't lie. Eight years ago we were building 225,000 houses in Australia. This year, we'll build about 160,000 houses. Next year, we're projected to build even less than 160,000. On the construction figures alone, we are going in the wrong direction.

The key to understanding that figure is the nexus between migration and housing completions. What we have seen in the last two years is over a million people coming into the country. That is the largest increase in migration since the 1950s, and that is happening at a time when housing construction has fallen through the floor. That is one of the major failings, on the numbers, that we see the government presiding over.

The government has had three main supply policies. The first policy was the Housing Australia Future Fund. It was promised before the last election, and the idea was that the government itself would come in and fund a whole bunch of housing construction. What we've seen is that the government has in fact put billions of dollars into a fund which has built no houses but has spent millions of dollars on executive salaries. It has been a complete failure.

In mid-September, the housing minister, Ms O'Neil, made the first announcement about disbursements from the Housing Australia Future Fund. Apparently, 13,000 houses will be built across the states and territories in Australia. But the minister hasn't told us who is going to get this money. The Senate has made an order for the production of documents in relation to actually just giving us the detail on the statement from 17 September. The Housing Australia Future Fund has been a flop in terms of its ability to build houses, which is why, of course, we were always sceptical about the idea of the government trying to construct these houses itself. Similarly, we have grave concerns about the other funds the government has established, such as the Reconstruction Fund. I think that, in the long run, the government may also regret having gone down this route of establishing these great big boondoggle funds, because they have not been a successful plan so far.

The other supply policy the government trumpets again and again—it's a bit bizarre to hear the '1.2 million new houses' line being trotted out on an almost daily basis, but that's what we hear. The government apparently wants to build 1.2 million houses over five years. Today we've seen more data from the Master Builders Association, saying that the government will be 400,000 houses short. It's a huge failure. When the Commonwealth government has so few levers to pull on housing, why would you make up something that you can never actually achieve and spend all your capital on a policy which you know you will not deliver on?

The other supply policy, which I would say is the most curious and bizarre of the government's supply policies is the idea that the Commonwealth government would give a tax cut to foreign fund managers to come in and do what they call 'build-to-rent housing'. This idea is effectively that a foreign organisation would come in as a pension fund or a sovereign wealth fund—it could be a BlackRock fund, it could be a Chinese fund or it could be a Middle Eastern pension fund or Middle Eastern government fund of some form—and that would be given a tax concession to go into the build-to-rent game. In this case what you see are these organisations building apartment blocks in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, perhaps, and then these organisations renting these out to Australians in perpetuity. They will never be owned by Australians. They will always be owned by foreign sovereign wealth funds and foreign fund measures.

Why would the Labor Party, with its mission to apparently do its best for the workers, want to see Australian housing stock in the hands of foreign fund managers? I don't understand. I'm sure there are a lot of good people trying to do good things inside the Labor Party, but this is a bizarre policy. Perhaps the strangest wrinkle on this is that even the Property Council itself says that the bill, which proposes a tax cut for foreign fund managers, won't even work. Of course, we see organisations constructing build-to-rent properties in Australia. We see it all the time. That is their third supply policy. The Housing Australia Future Fund has built no houses but has spent lots on executive salaries. Housing targets have failed, with no chance of ever getting that one. Build to rent is a bizarre idea—that we'd want to have our housing stock owned by foreign fund managers.

Then we come to the demand side. Apparently we're looking down the barrel of having a double dissolution election, which has been threatened, because of the Help to Buy scheme. Help to Buy was announced in the last election campaign for the Labor Party, the centrepiece of the campaign. When you need to be building more than a quarter of a million houses a year, this is their main policy on the demand side—10,000. It's not a policy for homeownership for people. It's a policy for state co-ownership, where the government would own 40 per cent of your home. It's taken the government almost two years to bring on this bill for a vote. They tried to do it in September, and it was deferred. We hear that they want to do it again, and they want to try and bring on a double dissolution trigger. If it was so important—if this was their best idea on the demand side—then why has it taken two years to bring the legislation into this parliament? It seems that either it's a massively incompetent government or it's been ashamed that it couldn't develop any new ideas after it took the Treasury benches.

This is their only policy for the demand side. What I mean by that is that this is the only policy to help first home buyers. I think everyone accepts that there is an argument to be made here on the demand side—that the scales can be tilted for first home buyers—because we want to see first home buyers get that Australian dream. What we are seeing is a trajectory where millennials and gen Zs will never own a house. That is a trajectory that everyone wants to change, but this is their only solution.

Then we go to what other options you could have to help Australians get that elusive first home. The Senate, in its wisdom, is running an inquiry into lending, but apparently, according to the Treasurer, lending policy is not something this parliament will think about. The parliament won't have any thoughts about lending policy, banking policy or mortgage policy. That's the preserve of APRA. APRA does all that. So his view is basically that we'll just give something as important as a mortgage policy to some unelected bureaucrats to do up in Sydney. They'll do it in the dark. It won't be disallowable, and we'll leave it all to the prudential regulator. That is the view of the Treasurer.

We take the view that it's pretty hard to get a first house without a mortgage, so we think that there are things that APRA is doing, in terms of its mandate and the way that it deploys its serviceability buffer, that warrant examination at the very least and maybe warrant reform. If a serviceability buffer is three per cent above where interest rates are now, at the top of a tightening cycle, maybe that is rubbing out too many prospective first home buyers from the Australian dream. Maybe that is something that the parliament—certainly the government in its attempt to try and thread together a coherent banking and housing policy—should be thinking about, but, so far, we have heard crickets from the government.

Barrenjoey has estimated that, if you were to tweak the serviceability buffer and the capital weights to help first home buyers, you might see an additional 50,000 people come into that market. Of course, all of these projections are always subject to building more houses and providing that supply, but I would've thought that was an important issue to look at.

Of course, then the other issue, on the demand side, is the superannuation issue, and that is the Labor Party's favourite issue never to talk about. They don't think that super can help people get a first home, because their view is that the super funds should hold all the money and invest in housing but it's not a good idea for people to do it themselves. Basically, in their world, your super can invest in any house except for your own.

In summary, on the supply side, we have seen fewer houses than in any time in the last decade. On the demand side, we've seen one idea to help first home buyers, which is stalled in this Senate and, I would say, at this point won't be passed in this parliament. It may feature again at the next Labor Party election launch potentially, but, other than that, the cupboard is bare. So the Australian people will be looking for more solutions than what the government has been prepared to develop during this parliament, and thank goodness for that policy smorgasbord that we'll see next year at the election.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I might just say on the housing question that, if there was ever a costed policy that emerges, I look forward to it. It's been 2½ years of torpor for the federal opposition and not one single costed policy. I read Senator Scarr's notice of motion. He's a good fella, but it really sums up—

He's a very good fella, Senator Smith. He really is. So are you as the last remaining Liberal in the Liberal Party! It's drifted so far from economic liberalism—

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

I'm not going anywhere!

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's hope for the Liberal Party if you stay. We've given up on Senator Bragg, who once used to espouse economic liberalism and socially progressive values, but there wasn't much of a difference between what Senator Bragg just said then on housing policy and what Jim Cairns might've said about foreign investment. There is not much of a difference between what Senator Bragg says and what Senator Hanson and Senator Roberts say about foreign investment.

It's time for, as they say in the classics, a good, long, hard look at yourselves on the foreign investment question. What's been going on, whether it's on Future Made in Australia or the housing fund, is you're trying to give people the heebie-jeebies about foreign investment. Rex Connor used to do it—again, he's a good fella. He spent a bit of time detained. Jim Cairns used to do it. He was a very interesting fella, Mr Cairns. He was Treasurer in the Whitlam government. He was a bit worried about foreign investment too. Senator Hanson, Senator Roberts and Senator Bragg are all very concerned about foreign investment.

I read this, and it just shows the arrogance and smugness of the Liberal Party on questions of economic management. They haven't learnt the lesson that they should have spent this term reflecting upon. You believe that you're fated, in the eastern suburbs circuits that you walk in, where there's the clink of champagne glasses and the runny noses and the hubbub of voices as you all talk to yourselves about what great economic managers you all are. The truth is you don't do the intellectual job of examining whether that's really true. You just assume, and there's an intellectual laziness about that, a lack of curiosity, a smugness, a complacency, a lack of hunger for the national interest. It's the old failures, Morrison leftovers, all going to the same fundraisers, all hanging out together with the well-heeled set: 'Everything is alright. We're the superior economic managers.' That's why you end up with a shadow Treasurer like Mr Taylor. That's how you get there. It's the bottom of the fiscal and economic policy barrel.

The truth is—I heard the Treasurer say this the other day and I sort of liked it—this lot forecast surpluses. They put out the mugs. I've got one of the mugs in my office. I drink a cup of tea out of it regularly. It says, 'Back in the black.' Well, it never ever happened because the Morrison government, the Liberals and the Nationals, weren't up to decent economic management. This government has been back in the black, back to back; twice—not just one year but two years. We've turned a conga line of Liberal deficits into Labor surpluses, with good economic management, with a disciplined approach to fiscal policy, led by my colleague Senator Gallagher, who actually knows what she's doing.

Senator Cormann and Senator Birmingham and all the former failed finance ministers—and Prime Minister Morrison, who was also finance minister for a time, when he didn't tell anybody, including Senator Birmingham. They had multiple finance minister. No wonder the show couldn't run itself. They talk tough. It's the old Liberal message, the entitlement, the smugness of 'we're great economic managers'. But they ran the show over a cliff, with a trillion dollars in debt and nothing to show for it. They have cast a shadow over public finances for generations to come.

The truth is pursuing a surplus is not about a coffee mug. We delivered the surpluses, but do you see any Labor coffee mugs? No, because we're doers, not talkers. We're lifters, not leaners. In this show, we lift everybody up; we're exhorting the Public Service to greater performance, making sure we do it in the public interest. A surplus isn't something to be put on a mug; it's designed to achieve a public policy objective. At this moment, when you need government to be acting in the acting interest—

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

You might be crowing too early, Senator Ayres!

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's very rowdy. It's the end of the week. He's looking forward to a long flight home. I always try and share. I always make sure that everybody gets a go. I gave Senator Bragg a go, and I'm going to really try, Senator Smith—oh, well, we'll see how we go.

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

Is that a broken promise?

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's a broken promise right there! The purpose of our surpluses is to put downward pressure on inflation. The purpose of our cost-of-living relief is to support families through what is a challenging period and put downward pressure on inflation—a trick that those opposite could never pull off, aren't capable of and have opposed every step of the way. Wage rises, tax cuts, rent assistance, knocking off student debt, electricity relief, childcare relief—these things have made a real difference. For working families in Western Australia, South Australia, in the territories and on the east coast of Tasmania, reducing childcare costs and lifting childcare wages made child care better and reduced costs for parents, meaning more people participating for more hours in the economy.

Do you know how economically illiterate this show are? When the latest productivity figures come out—just conceptually, I want you to try to think about it for a second—if the number of hours worked goes up then labour productivity falls. I just want to let you in on the secret. For the people on that side, this is like a catastrophe. Labour productivity moves up and down. It's the long-term trajectory that you have to examine. After the failed decade of the lowest productivity growth on record in Australian history that made some of the undeveloped economies look good during the Morrison-Abbott-Turnbull catastrophe, the idea that this show would criticise this government on the basis of productivity performance is like Idi Amin criticising another country for their human rights performance. That's a reference that the gen Z people that Senator Bragg talked about might not get. But that's what we have achieved.

The research demonstrates that, if you followed the Dutton approach on wages and tax cuts, working Australians would be $4,700 worse off in real terms. That's if the squalid torpor approach that characterises the show opposite had prevailed. We've delivered wage reform. We've delivered tax reform so that people earn more and keep more of what they earn. That's meant for childcare workers and aged-care workers, in particular, that their wages have lifted. It's good for them, good for their kids, good for their communities, good for participation in the economy, good for caring for little kids and supporting their education and good for caring for older Australians.

The surpluses that we have delivered, plus the cost-of-living relief that we have engaged in, has not solved every problem—not at all. There is still more work to do. Inflation is much lower than it was at its dizzying heights when the Morrison government lost office. It has fallen. It still has further to go. There is still more work to do. This government will continue to do that work.

That's the here and now, but we are also engaged in long-term structural reform in the energy market in particular, where we have to turn this great big ship around. It's headed for disaster. Four gigawatts of generation capacity went out of the electricity system and every single coal-fired power station in the country closed down or announced their closure under these characters' watch. They used to carry around lumps of coal in the parliament. The energy market was in complete disarray. The investment community around the world didn't bother knocking in Australia. I know Senator Bragg doesn't like foreign investment, but it is how you get things done. The investment community didn't want to come anywhere near Australia because of the sovereign risk that was presented to them by the government. So there needed to be energy reform

Future Made in Australia is, again, an area where Senator Bragg and Mr Taylor—God love him, poor old Angus Taylor—are out there talking down Australian manufacturing and the capacity of Australians to make things. The claims that are made about Future Made in Australia by the coalition that is now formed by the Liberals, Nationals and Greens are quite curious. What they say is that Australians aren't up to it. That's the message they send. This is the show that had former senator Johnston in here.

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

Only some Australians aren't up to it.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Smith's poor old Senate colleague Senator Johnston, when confronted with the national task of building ships and submarines in our national security interest, said that Australians couldn't build a canoe. Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey forced 40,000 automotive jobs offshore and exulted in it. They loved it. They were absolutely gleeful about sending good union jobs offshore. They loved every second of it—all that lost industrial capacity. They are hostile to Australian manufacturing. They dress up in the high-vis but can't deliver a single manufacturing job. It's not clear to me which bit of Future Made in Australia they are so afraid of. They are certainly afraid of the future.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are certainly hostile to the Australian national interest—particularly our security and economic resilience interests in an environment where our future security cannot be taken for granted. They are hostile to Western Australian mining, resources and manufacturing. In Western Australia, their hostility to Future Made in Australia goes down like a bucket of sick. It is anti-Australian and anti-Western-Australian in particular. They're hostile to Australia's national interest, to the future and to Australian manufacturing. Good luck prosecuting that message in Western Sydney! Good luck prosecuting that message in the industrial suburb— (Time expired)

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't have a lot of time. While I agree with the sentiment of this motion from Senator Scarr, I think that, with six months remaining before the next federal election, it's time the Liberal Party also put out their policies. It's one thing to criticise, and it's been very easy to do with the Labor Party, who have been floundering, but I spent five years as the secretary of the finance backbench on the Liberal Party. I called many backbench meetings to look at reforming policy. I've made numerous suggestions. I note Senator Bragg's comments about foreign fund managers owning housing in this country. The Liberal Party has done nothing to tackle superannuation in this country. I asked Josh Frydenberg, the former Treasurer, numerous times to pause that increase in the superannuation levy. He didn't do it. He allowed it to go to 12 per cent. John Howard and Peter Costello should have stopped the rise in superannuation when they got in in 1996 and killed superannuation stone cold dead. They didn't.

This morning, the People First Party released its capital markets policies. One of the things we are going to do is to actually make superannuation boards be elected by the members. There's this little thing called democracy, and superannuation is very undemocratic. There was no referendum that even asked if people wanted 12 per cent of their wages taken from them and given to someone they've never met.

The other thing we're going to do is disallow superannuation funds from voting at AGMs unless they get direct proxies from their members. We're not going to have these left-wing superannuation funds, or any ideological superannuation funds, shoving their ideology down corporate boardrooms—

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

The time for the debate has expired. Senator Rennick, you'll be in continuance.