Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I take the interjection. Let me help out here. In the short term, we do need better access to workers and supplies. This issue is exercising small businesses, and large, more than anything. We all hear this; we're talking to them all the time. And we know that if they can increase their output, if they can increase their supply, it will take pressure off prices. That's how markets work. That's why we've proposed a very specific measure to provide pensioners with more incentive to get back into the workforce, to work extra hours, through doubling the pensioner work bonus—good for pensioners, good for businesses and good for containing inflation. Let's get on with it.

Beyond this, we need good budget management, not higher taxes. The single greatest tool a government has in order to ease inflation and interest rates is to manage its budget. The IMF has told us this, saying that taming inflation should be the first priority for policymakers. And Chris Richardson recently said—he put it very simply, in fact—that if you throw money at the economy, you just get extra inflation. In today's statement, Labor has failed to outline a plan to address the cost of living. We do not know what they propose. We do know what they proposed in the election: $18.9 billion in new and additional spending measures, $45 billion in new debt for off-budget funds. That's their sneaky spending, the $45 billion—the off-budget stuff. Labor could rein in that spending now. They would have immediate support.

The Reserve Bank plays a crucial role in managing inflation, and we need a strong, independent, credible, capable Reserve Bank. But it's not enough to leave the response to rising cost-of-living pressures to the Reserve Bank. The less work Labor does on managing the budget the more the Reserve Bank will have to raise interest rates. Without a Labor plan for better budget outcomes, Australians will pay more on their mortgages.

Finally, productivity takes pressure off prices. In all the build-up to this statement, this week we've seen what Labor's priorities are on productivity. Labor has introduced regulation to abolish the ABCC and, in the process, raised the cost of construction in this country—the cost of building homes, the cost of building schools, the cost of building hospitals and the cost of building roads. We know from independent economic analysis that this will be a $47.5 billion hit to our economy.

At the same time, Labor is removing transparency and accountability from our super system and from initiatives that support better fund management and ensure that Australian's retirement savings are productively invested. These are actions the government is taking that are worsening productivity at a time when they should be searching for solutions to improve it. The solutions are there if you're prepared to look for them.

No-one blames the government for the global circumstances challenging Australia's economy, but we can and will hold them to account for how they respond to it. Today's statement neglected to acknowledge one simple fact: the government controls what happens from here. The government can make choices to address these pressures, and the risk for Australia is that Labor makes a bad situation worse. Australia needs a plan, not a picture. At the moment, the only plan Labor has is to make Australians poorer.

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