Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I must say, in this parliament there are few things more cringe-worthy than a pat-on-the-back style of motion like this from the government—a motion that says: 'Look how good we are!' and 'Look what amazing things we've done over the last six months!' I say to members opposite and to the member who moved this motion that these sorts of aren't-we-good, let's-pat-ourselves-on-the-back motions are completely disconnected from the feelings of many in the community. There is the litany of broken promises and the most significant failure of this government on the economy. I can assure you that this how-good-are-we motion does not resonate out there.

This government failed the biggest test. We heard before the election that, if they won, shortly after the election they would have a budget that would set out their agenda. We saw the budget spoken about for about one day and then they moved on. They went out to sell the budget the morning after the budget and they got a bit of a reaction from the Australian public, who said: 'This thing is a stinker. This thing is a shocker.' We have scarcely heard about the budget since that morning.

Quite frankly, it was a budget that was able to do a few things quite remarkably. Get a group of year 12 students or a group of economics 101 university students together and ask them: 'What's the one thing you wouldn't do in an environment of high inflation? What's the one thing you wouldn't do?' You wouldn't pour fuel on the fire of that inflation, putting more pressure on inflation, putting more pressure on mortgage rates and, therefore, putting more pressure on families.

What did this budget do? It ran a larger budget deficit than the year before, which was in the middle of the pandemic. In the middle of the pandemic we ran a budget deficit of $32 billion—quite rightly—to deliver the support that Australians needed at that crucial time. Yet in a year where we have elevated and rising inflation we have a budget deficit higher. I am sure the economics 101 students or the year 12 students who have just studied economics would say, 'Every extra $1 billion that the government spends is an extra $1 billion that the Reserve Bank Governor has to take out of the economy via higher mortgage rates.'

They were able to simultaneously do two things: they broke faith with the Australian public that they could be trusted to manage the budget, first and foremost, and they also outlined in their budget that, sadly, we won't see the $275 reduction in power bills that was promised on no less than 97 occasions by members opposite. They don't want to talk about it now. They don't want to repeat those promises now. I challenge members opposite to put those shiny little tiles on their Facebook pages today—the ones they put on before the election that said they would deliver power bill reductions of $275. Why? Because we saw in the budget that power prices are set to increase by more than 50 per cent. The government hashed the economics of this nation so badly in the first five minutes of government. It is not something that they should be patting themselves on the back for.

As the member for Bowman eloquently outlined, this motion also mentions the success of repealing the cashless debit card. In my 10 or so years in this place there have been few things that have perplexed me more than this policy from the Labor Party. I think we have to accept in politics that people are here for the right reasons. In my experience all members of parliament are basically decent. So how on earth could an otherwise intelligent, decent person think that pouring more alcohol, drugs, gambling and pornography into vulnerable communities will somehow not have a devastating impact on those communities? How could anyone think that that's not going to lead to more children being neglected and more domestic violence?

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