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

Under the Labor Albanese government, I am hearing over and over and over again that our country is clearly heading in the wrong direction. Whether I'm talking to locals at the supermarket in Ellenbrook with David Goode or visiting cafes along the northern coastal suburbs in Perth with Jan Norberger, or even when I'm chatting with locals at pharmacies in Forrestfield and High Wycombe with Matt Moran, the feedback is the same: the cost-of-living crisis is hurting, and it is hurting Australians badly. In particular, I'm hearing that again and again right across these suburbs and right across Perth.

The tragedy of it is that this has deliberately been implemented by the Labor Party. They have pump-primed an additional $315 billion across their three failed budgets. Anybody knows that, when you pump-prime the economy like that, you cause inflation to rise, which then causes interest rates to rise, and so it goes on and on. I think even John Maynard Keynes, the great pump-priming economist, would think that those opposite have gone too far. Western Australians have suffered 12 interest rate rises under those opposite. For anybody, particularly those on low incomes, trying to rent a house in Perth is almost impossible, and that is a direct consequence of what those opposite have done.

While interest rates are starting to fall in many other nations or have fallen significantly, as they have in New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Great Britain, there is no sign whatsoever of relief for households in Australia. When you combine the rapidly falling household disposable income with severe housing costs and the government's disastrous immigration policy—flooding Australia when we don't have homes—all of this is the result of—

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Smith.