Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

he certainly doesn't—and fiscal policy, the things that the Commonwealth government does in terms of borrowing, spending, taxation and all those things. Those opposite, hopefully, do know that the Reserve Bank is independent, though certainly when we came in there'd been 10 years of appointments to the Reserve Bank by the coalition.

Let's go back to why we've had these interest rate rises. That is what the MPI is about. The last time we saw a CPI jump of 2.1 per cent, the largest quarterly rise in inflation this century, who was in government? The Morrison government. That was in the March 2022 quarter. It was a record inflationary increase, and the member for Cook was Prime Minister. He was also the Treasurer and the finance minister, so he was certainly responsible for it. I think some guy called Josh Frydenberg might have been involved as well, but it was mainly the member for Cook. Cast your mind back to that last budget before the election last year, where they sprayed money around like it was champagne after a grand prix. Do you remember, Madam Deputy Speaker? They were obviously shameless endeavours by the Liberal Party to win votes, and we've seen from Audit Office report after Audit Office report that it was not done with anything like sensible government but with all sorts of rorts and weird priorities.

Those opposite don't mention in this MPI the first interest rate rise. I will give some credit to the coalition in terms of responding to COVID. I've been in government when we've been responding to a budget emergency. Measures have to be rushed, they have to be quick, and it's hard to be precise. When the global financial crisis hit, we rushed money out to people. It was a difficult time. So responding to COVID meant that some budget measures were a case of spraying money around. I acknowledge that and accept it, and there was bipartisan support from us in opposition for those endeavours; in fact, we suggested some of them. But the budget before the election last year was not a COVID budget. That was a case of running into the cabin with the fire hose and spraying water everywhere. And now they sit over there and say, 'Gee, its wet in here.' Everything's damaged, we've got to repair everything, we're paying interest on the repair bill, and they've got the hide to say, 'Gee, look at that; there've been a couple of interest rate rises from the Reserve Bank governor'—the independent Reserve Bank governor.

We are against inflation because we know that inflation hurts workers first and hardest. We know that. We know that some of their core voting groups actually like inflation—some of them do. That's not our core constituency. Workers are first and foremost in our considerations when it comes to economic policy, and we know that workers will be hurt. That's why we put out a responsible budget that did so many things that weren't inflationary: cheaper child care—not inflationary; cheaper medicines—not inflationary; increased bulk-billing rates—not inflationary. Do you remember when the member for Dickson was the health minister? He was going to put in place a GP tax, which would have been inflationary, if he'd got his hands on the budget. Fee-free TAFE and expanding the paid parental leave scheme also are about increasing demand, but both are devoted to boosting flatlining productivity, which is what any sensible government does. Those opposite have no idea.

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