Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll go to a topic that those opposite like to talk about a lot. They get upset when we call out the political spin of the $1 trillion lie of the debt they inherited. A few people yelled out before, 'What are the numbers?' so I will give them the numbers. The net debt you inherited was $514 billion, and 30 per cent of that was inherited by the former coalition government from the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. So those are the numbers; you can keep spinning the line as much as you like, but it's actually not true. You can go to the ABC's Fact Check and you can go to this wonderful thing called the budget papers to check those numbers. They all add up, so that's the number that you inherited. You can continue the spin as much as you like; it's not true.

The Minister for Veteran's Affairs spoke at the start of this debate and talked about how the biggest quarter for inflation was March last year. While that's correct, there's a pretty significant event that happened in the March quarter last year: Russia invaded Ukraine. Clearly, that was going to have an impact. He then went on to claim that the former government did nothing to support Australians. I seem to remember that there was this great initiative in cutting the fuel excise. That was immediate, and it gave relief to Australians when they needed it. It was temporary so as not to continue to impact on the structural deficit within the budget. That's what the former coalition government did: when there were challenges they acted straightaway, and the Australian public knows that. They saw it every week at the fuel bowser; when prices were over $2.20 they went down to under $2. We're now back, depending on the weekend and where you are, somewhere between $1.80 and $2 mark. That's an example of how you can act decisively when crises come.

What we hear from this government is all excuses. This is the Prime Minister who I'll quote from April last year: 'I'll take responsibility. I'll show leadership. I'll deal with the challenges that are there and there are also opportunities we can seize.' But all we hear from the dispatch box are excuses from this Prime Minister. The Treasurer said on 17 May last year:

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

Well, he's not taking responsibility. They stand up every day and talk about spin. When we look at this budget and at the inflationary challenges, we don't have to take the RBA governor's word for it, because we know he's under pressure: he's looking for his job to be renewed so he's not going to say anything publicly. But look at his actions weeks after the budget: an increase in interest rates. The reason that occurred is because the target of the Treasurer was completely wrong. Let's take it back a step: the inflationary target for this country is two to three per cent. That's the target we're aiming for. Where are we? At six, 6½ or seven per cent—6.8 per cent in April. What should a Treasurer and a Prime Minister try to do? Should they try to deliver a budget which, by their own admission, is at best case neutral? And at worst case, it's expansionary! That's by the Treasurer and the Prime Minister's own admission. No, that's not what he should have been aiming to do. He should have been aiming to bring inflation down to the two to three per cent target band that the RBA governor is trying to get to. So this Treasurer and this Prime Minister failed by their own admission because they had the wrong targets. This is going to cost Australians, and it's going to cost many people in Casey, as interest rates go up, as inflation goes up and as energy goes up.

We know this Prime Minister doesn't care about economics. He didn't know the cash rate. He didn't know the unemployment rate. He has no interest in economics. We have a Treasurer whose priority isn't the economy. This Treasurer's primary priority is, let's be honest, to make sure he can win the support of the backbench on the other side. That's what he's really looking at. He wants to take over from Prime Minister Albanese. That is his priority. He won't make the tough decisions required to bring inflation down. He leaves every Australian struggling every day to find the money they need to pay their bills. Australians know they've been abandoned by this government—they know every time they get an electricity bill or a gas bill, every time the bank sends them that letter saying their interest rates are going up, every time a new inflation target comes out significantly above what they were predicting.

This is a government that has no plans to bring inflation down. In fact, every time they make an economic decision, they make it worse. They're very happy to claim the credit from the independent Fair Work Commission, but they will then distance themselves from the independent Reserve Bank. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim credit from an independent organisation when you like the results they deliver and not take it when you don't like the results they deliver.

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