Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm glad to be taken off point because—this is really the government's whole role, their whole game, to point back across and not take any responsibility for what's happening now. We saw today's interest rate rise. If we're talking about cost-of-living pressures, the first interest rate rise, back in May, is only being passed on to people now. So we've got four more of these coming. They're about to hit—one after the other, like a train. Across Australia this cost-of-living pressure will continue to rise, and this is happening entirely on Labor's watch.

I'm sure that we'll be asked to wait until the budget to see anything happen here. We'll be asked to wait until the budget, and we'll have to have patience, because Labor has absolutely no intention of acting at all on cost-of-living pressures until then. We know every Labor Treasurer wants to be seen as an economic conservative and the Treasurer will be trying to present that in this budget, but Australians will be waiting with the patience of a chopping block on this one, because we know what's coming. This is going to be a tax-and-spend budget. We can see it. Labor have made their intentions very, very clear.

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