James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday was another very tough day for millions of families and businesses in this country—to hear again another month, another increase in the Reserve Bank's cash rate. This is obviously something that is weighing more and more heavily on decision-making around the kitchen table on the family budget, as people factor in and do the calculations on how much these ever-increasing interest rates are having an impact on them and the sorts of decisions they hope not to have to take around whether or not they can afford to have a family holiday this year—maybe in more serious cases, whether they may have to consider selling their home at some point—if these increases continue.

I am sure all members of parliament are hearing the real, personal stories that come with these opaque economic decisions that, in the macro, are significant enough, but are most significant when you think about the way they impact on individual families. I don't think it's unreasonable for the opposition to want to debate the most significant challenge facing the people of Australia in this parliament on a regular basis. If those opposite are indignant about this topic being raised regularly, why don't you do something about it? Then we won't have to keep talking about it. That's an option. There's an option for the government: to actually address the most significant challenge in the lives of Australians. But to suggest it's somehow inappropriate for us to raise this as a matter of public importance—I'd love to understand what you think is more important than the dramatic increase in cost burdens on families in this country.

The other thing that is really concerning which is coming from members of the government is the suggestion that they've actually got a plan. If they didn't have a plan then at least we might have something to look forward to. Apparently, what they're already doing is as good as it gets. So if you're an Australian family then just strap yourself in for more of exactly the same: more interest rate rises, more reduction in real wages, higher mortgage payments and higher power bills. That's because their plan is fully implemented; they have this great economic plan and what's happening right now to the families of this country is the dividend of that plan. There's nothing more to come. They're implementing a plan, and the result of that is the significant pain that Australian families and Australian businesses are bearing.

Regrettably, interest rates are one of the challenging pieces of economic data that are out there. But I worry most about the dramatic reduction in real wages. For the party which is purportedly of the workers to preside over the greatest contraction of real wages in my adult lifetime is something that they should be focused on, and which they should certainly be ashamed of. There is nothing in their plan—which, apparently, has been fully implemented and which is resulting in all this disastrous economic data—which is helping to increase wages whatsoever. Wages are currently going backwards. Regrettably, more data, sector by sector and industry by industry, is showing that economic strife is continuing to come at an ever-growing pace. That's not the fault of the invasion of Ukraine and it's not the fault of all these forces from overseas. Those were well known to the government when they handed down their budget in October last year. They made a promise then, 92 times, to reduce electricity prices—and they're now going up.

They say that they have an economic plan which is fully implemented, and that we should get behind it and support it. And yet the outcome of that plan is that every significant economic measure which is relevant to families and businesses is going backwards. If they're proud of that and want us to support them, then they have another think coming. Far from breaking the economic destruction and the wealth destruction that they are meting out on the people of Australia, we have a vastly different ambition for the future of families and businesses in this country.

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