Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government has had ample opportunity to address inflation. They've had more than a year in the job now, and we're still hearing that it's someone else's fault. We've just heard it was the coalition government's fault. It was COVID's fault, it was Kyiv's fault, it was America's fault, it was even the fault of the floods for a while there. It's been everyone's fault—everyone but the Labor government.

Remember a year ago when the Treasurer said that 5.1 per cent inflation was 'a full-blown cost-of-living crisis'? Today, inflation sits at around seven per cent—higher than in the United States, Canada, Germany or Japan. So whose responsibility is this? In May 2022, just before the election, the Prime Minister made this solemn promise to the Australian people:

… as your Prime Minister—I won't run from responsibility. I won't treat every crisis as a chance to blame someone else. I will show up, I will step up, I will bring people together.

Then his Treasurer to be jumped up on the same bandwagon. He said:

… we want to show up every day and take responsibility. Not just for the good things, but for the difficult things as well.

Well, through you, Deputy Speaker, to the Treasurer, I've got news for this government: it's time to show up. As a result of the government's inability to tame inflation, its constant stoking of the economic engine with brand-new spending, Australians have confronted 12 interest rate rises in almost as many months. The average Australian household is now more than $25,000 worse off each and every year following the last budget. And Australian families are paying more for everything: their mortgage, their energy bills, their tools, their groceries, their kids' school needs, their clothes and their shoes.

So what is this government doing to address inflation? Ask them and, literally without blinking, they will list a stream of handouts—handouts which, in turn, risk making inflation worse. Anthony Walker, a director at independent rating agency S&P Global Ratings, noted in May that handouts in the most recent budget may add to inflationary pressures. Former RBA governor Glenn Stevens has conceded the Albanese government's budget would have an expansionary effect. This government needs to be exerting downward pressure on inflation, not upward. What it needs is a comprehensive economic plan to boost productivity and to tame inflation. Without an economic plan, the Reserve Bank is having to do all the heavy lifting along. Without an economic plan, Australian families and our struggling small businesses will have to keep paying the price for Labor's laziness.

I see my local residents paying the price for Labor's failures—Labor's inability, in their own words, to step up. So many residents of Flinders are on fixed incomes. Indeed, more than 22,000 of my electors are pensioners, with very little room to absorb increased costs. About one-third of dwellings on the peninsula, roughly 34 per cent, are owned with a mortgage. Back in 2021, when we had the last census, 15 per cent of them were already spending more than 30 per cent of their income on their mortgage interest repayments. Those who were lucky enough to secure interest rates in the high ones or low two per cents during the last government's tenure are now facing their interest rates shooting up to more than eight or nine per cent the day after their fixed term expires.

A few weeks ago AGL came to visit me and told me that the default price for gas in Victoria for homes and small businesses will be going up by about 30 per cent midyear. What will that do to local businesses like Bass & Flinders Distillery, which I visited on the weekend? A thriving local business, it makes the best gin in the country—as I see that the member for Casey is not here to correct me, I proclaim it to be true! How will businesses like Bass & Flinders in Dromana, or Chief's Son and Original Spirit Co in Somerville, who all run their gas-fired distilled spirits stills on the peninsula for days on end, absorb a 30 per cent price increase overnight? What will it do to Sealite, a world-leading business in marine technology and safety which manufactures giant ocean buoys and navigation moulds from molten plastic produced exclusively by gas? Labor's failure to act to address inflation has a real impact on the ground across my electorate.

Just after the last Labor budget back in May, I received an email from a constituent which summed up the impact this government's policies are having. She allowed me to share her words here: 'Dear Zoe, I have been in business since March 1980. In the late eighties we had that recession. I remember clearly what it was like: high interest rates and cost-of-living increases. Many people lost their houses, jobs and businesses and could not sell the house for months. At the present time I feel we are going full circle. Business has dried up. People are really tightening the belt to pay their mortgages and bills. I know I am saying what you already know, but what a sad state of affairs our beautiful country is in.' (Time expired)

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