Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was trying remember whether there is in fact a point of order for weirdness but concluded that there isn't, otherwise it certainly could have been taken. This is an absolute treat, isn't it? It's a lovely start to a parliamentary fortnight, this motion from the Liberals congratulating themselves on their economic record. I mean, what a contribution to debate. I read it, and I did actually laugh out loud. I thought, 'Is this April Fools' Day?', and then I looked more closely and I thought, 'Oh, it's a new member. It's the member for Hughes. She's new here.' But she has a great advantage over most of us here; she has low expectations, because all she has to do is not be Craig Kelly and people are going to welcome her contributions and presence here.

But really this motion is utter, total nonsense. If the Liberal or Morrison government's economic record is success then I would hate to see failure. I mean, seriously! A trillion dollars of Liberal debt—the previous speaker said, 'Well, it's not fair when they say that, because half of it was from Labor.' It wasn't. It actually wasn't. That is an untruth. He has a problem—a pattern of mendacity, if he keeps saying that, because I'm not allowed to call him a liar; I know that. The former government paid $20 billion of JobKeeper to companies to increase their profits. If you were big business, you'd be backing up the truck at the Treasury, thinking, 'Really? They're going to shovel it full of cash for the next generation to repay?'. What a bunch of stooges. Over a billion dollars they spent on taxpayer ads advertising themselves.

I mean, where were the rorted grants programs? Well, anything the National Party administered you can guarantee was rorted, all on the national debt for the next generation. Real wages fell in this country, and they can't hide behind COVID. That is the big lie they keep repeating, 'It was a tough time. We had to pour out the cash everywhere because of COVID.' It was 10 years of dysfunction and division. The OECD comparisons are clear: real wages went backwards for a decade even before COVID. Productivity was falling even before COVID—the worst productivity performance, over the decade they were in office, of the last 60 years that they've measured and recorded it. It is an appalling economic record: the highest inflation rate in 20 years; flatlining productivity, as I said; and a cost-of-living crisis.

I agree with some of the defences, excuses, the former Prime Minister gave. There are global factors in this. But there was also policy laziness at a domestic level. There were contributions because of what they did and what they failed to do that led to the mess that we've inherited now. Their response was always one of bandaids or sticky tape: throw a little bit of cash, make a silly announcement at a press conference and give it a cute program name. Remember JobMaker? That was the centrepiece a few budgets ago. We had good old Josh—what happened to him?—and Scott Morrison, now the member for Cook, I think we call him, standing up there going, 'We're going to create 450,000 jobs with JobMaker.' Well, 12 months on they'd created one per cent of what they said, and they quietly scrapped the program. It's all announcement. It was never about delivery and serious structural reform.

Now, the motion has these little gems. It says:

cost of living and inflationary pressures are having a significant impact on Australian households and small businesses—

Well, no—I'm not allowed to say that word—Sherlock—

current and predicted interest rate rises will have severe implications for working families and the housing market—

That's genius, isn't it? It's like the Liberals discovered reality—

… whilst global pressures are having an impact, the Government can implement measures—

Imagine if they'd been the government for the last 10 years. Maybe they could have done something. The former Prime Minister's vision, remember, was snapback. After COVID we were just going to go back to how things were. It was all going so terribly well, wasn't it, with falling productivity, falling real wages and rising national debt.

Labor did not make the mess, but we are taking responsibility for fixing it. In the first hundred days we backed the minimum wage rise, which was approved by the Fair Work Commission, benefitting 2.8 million Australians. On climate change legislation, the previous speaker said, 'That's a waste of time. No-one cares about that.' Imagine supporting renewable energy, the cheapest form of new energy, to put downwards pressure on power prices? Imagine such a radical step?

But instead, the former government actively covered up—they actively covered up!—the power price rises which were coming from them. They know it; they don't like to talk about it. We could call it a lie, but we won't say that—will we, Deputy Speaker Freelander? There are 180,000 fee-free TAFE places coming on board this year and we're fixing the migration mess they left, with nearly a million visas backlogged right across the economy and families. It's hurting the economy and we're taking action to fix their mess.

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