Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia is caught up in an inflationary challenge that is indeed sweeping the world. Yes, our headline inflation rate is too high, at seven per cent. In the UK it is currently 8.7 per cent; in New Zealand it is 6.7 per cent; and in Germany it is six per cent. The only bright spot here is the United States. The United States's inflation has drastically come down. It is sitting at around five per cent. It peaked in June of last year at nine per cent. That should offer some hope for us.

The issue here is that Australia is in this position when it didn't need to be struggling like this. We're in this position because those opposite removed the shock absorbers from our economy. What were those shock absorbers? They were around energy, they were around housing and they were around supply chain, including labour and skills. Had they actually been addressed then our country would have been able to buffer itself from these economic headwinds and from a black swan event, which we all know about, the pandemic. Now we are also affected by the threat multiplier of climate change, which is very much upon us.

What is not discussed, unfortunately, is that those opposite actually poured high octane fuel over this inflationary problem. It surprises me that no one has actually talked about this. There was a report that came out in the Fin Review in April of this year that cited a respected economist, Chris Murphy, who had done an analysis. What he showed was that the stimulus of those opposite, of approximately $429 million, added an additional three points of inflation. So instead of having an inflation problem of seven per cent we could have had an inflation problem of four.

Australia, incidentally, was one of five countries in the OECD, a group of 38 mostly rich countries, that basically pumped too much stimulus into the economy during the early stages of the pandemic. Those opposite like to style themselves as the fiscal guardians of this nation. They're meant to be the fiscal conservatives. Instead what we had was a demonstration of fiscal incontinence—I can say that, as a doctor. Our focus as a government is squarely on providing targeted cost-of-living relief, laying the foundations for our future prosperity and putting our budget on a more sustainable footing, so that we can actually provide those services that Australians rightfully expect—things like education and health care, for example.

In terms of energy, we are going through an energy crisis we did not need to have. We were simply overexposed to fossil fuels after a decade of policy chaos. With the passage of our historic Climate Change Act, we have now delivered policy certainty. That has actually translated to unprecedented investment in the fourth quarter of last year of $4.29 billion—that is, final investment decisions were made last year, 10 times higher than the third quarter of last year. If that doesn't send a signal that Australia is open for business, then I don't know what does.

We have also invested and opened up three offshore wind zones around Australia—one in the Bass Strait. As we speak, there is a ship in the Bass Strait that is drilling. It is not drilling the seabed for gas. It is actually drilling the seabed where the footings of wind turbines that are 300 metre tall will stand. This is the future we are delivering for young Australians. This is the future that they are going to seize. Those wind turbines, one day, will be made from green steel. Why? Because we invested $2 billion in that budget into green hydrogen. We've also invested $15 billion into making more things in Australia—a future made in Australia. We're investing in our sovereign capability—something those opposite voted against. It is absolutely baffling, considering that in the league table of the OECD we are at the bottom of that list. We get the wooden spoon for self-sufficient manufacturing in our country.

These are all programs that are going to yield dividends in the longer term. But we know that people are struggling now, which is why we invested in tripling the bulk billing incentive in order to arrest the decline in bulk billing that we are seeing around the country. We've also brought in extended dispensing, so that Australians pay less for their medicines. I would say that there is a lot we are doing and we are future focused. (Time expired)

See this speech in context