Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) | Hansard source

We know that, when it comes to positive economic policy development, the member for Moreton and the Labor Party are 'too low for zero'. Deputy Speaker, do you remember that supermarket advertising jingle, 'Down, down'? You had people jumping around and singing to a not very good jingle, 'Down, down', and you had the red arrows going down, down? If there's any integrity in electoral advertising at the next election, the Labor Party's posters should all be 'Up, up' because that's what's happened to costs since the Labor Party came to office. As the member for Forde reminded us, food is up nine per cent, housing is up 12 per cent, electricity is up 20 per cent, insurance is up 22 per cent and gas is up 27 per cent. It's all just going up, up, and I look forward to seeing posters with arrows pointing to the sky.

I'll tell you one thing that is down, and that's net disposable income, particularly in Victoria. Not only are Victorians suffering from inflation because of the irresponsible economic management of the federal Labor government; they're being hit with all sorts of taxes by the state Victorian government. Consequently—and I think a year 8 economics student would have been able to work this out—they don't spend as much as they used to. If they don't spend as much as they used to, the economy slows, and people are at risk of losing their jobs.

We've got inflation problems. We've got stubbornly high inflation. Every time we ask the government about inflation or they talk about inflation, they say: 'We're doing things to get it under control. We're addressing inflation.' What causes inflation? Excessive and wasteful government spending causes inflation. We saw a lot of that during the Rudd-Gillard years. I spoke about that when I was talking about some of the rip-offs in vocational education training and the RTOs that ran rampant during those years. We're seeing wasteful government spending again.

Even worse than that are taxes on productivity. We seem to be having a debate about how much stuff the federal government can give to people. I'm not averse to the federal government helping people out, but surely we should be having a discussion about productivity and growing the economy and making sure that we've got profitable, competitive, productive businesses, because that will get inflation down and that'll mean real wage rises for people.

I'll give you some examples in an area I'm very passionate about, which is agriculture. Everyone's affected by agriculture, because, as I said, food prices are going up. The way to bring food prices down is to give agriculturalists and farmers the tools they need to increase productivity, profitability and efficiency in their business. The government is taking a lot of those tools away. The PALM scheme is no longer workable for many people in horticulture. The ripping out of extra irrigation water from the Murray-Darling Basin means that investment in agriculture is threatened because people don't know whether their water costs are going to be so high that it's not worth growing stuff. These things affect our economy and they affect the prices people pay when they go into the supermarket.

The government is very excited during question time for members to get up and ask ministers questions like: 'In your portfolio, what's the tax cut going to mean? What's $15 a week going to do?' Well, it is not going to do much compared to how much they have already been smashed under the cost-of-living increases since the Albanese government came to office.

The previous government had a scheme called the low- and middle-income tax offset. That could have been extended.

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