Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great privilege to speak on this motion because there is nothing more important to average Australians right now than their capacity to get ahead. There has never been a time in our nation's history where so many families have worked harder and tried to get ahead but are feeling like they are going backwards.

While we hear the heroic and stoic rhetoric of the members of this government saying how Australians are doing better under this government, I say with genuine sadness that it simply doesn't stack up to the economic reality. Over the past three years, real household disposable income per capita has collapsed by 6.3 per cent. If you're going to see real wages improve, people have to be living it; you can't just say it with words. We know that Australians are not living it because they are seeing real declines in their wages and in their household disposable income. There's a simple reason for that: not only are their wages not moving; in addition to that, they are seeing all their costs for their household increase.

It is, of course, explicit with their energy bills. Everybody knows the reality when they pick up their electricity bill or their gas bill and have to deal with bill shock. But there has been nothing more explicit in the realities of what Australian households have dealt with than persistent and globally high interest rates. While the rest of the world has seen a decline in their interest rates, which has meant that inflation has come under control, Australia has consistently had persistent high interest rates in comparison to OECD countries. That comes directly off the bottom line of household savings, so, as people work harder, they're falling farther and further behind.

We see it at the supermarket every time we go and pay for simple groceries. I've never seen a time in the past—you might have seen it on momentary occasions. I remember going to the supermarket in the past after cyclones and picking up a bundle of bananas, and there would be a shock of $25 and have to put them back. You might remember some of those times yourself, Deputy Speaker Wilkie. But I've never seen a time in this nation's history where people have gone to buy food or groceries, ended up looking at a trolley and saying, 'I'm not sure I can afford that,' and had to put items back on the shelves, as Australians are doing right now.

What Australians need now more than anything is a sense of hope. They need a sense of hope not just that their wages are going to increase but also that they're going to see a reduction in the costs that they are living with so that they can stabilise their household finances and also so that they can get ahead. That sense of hope that young Australians and families need right now is so important not just for what we are living with today but, more importantly, for the sense of aspiration and hope that Australians will have for the future. When Australians lose a sense of hope, they seek to live only for the moment and for today, and then they lose that sense of character, of putting our investment and our energy towards a better tomorrow. When we lose that spirit, that's when we see people no longer doing things like saving to buy their first home or seeking to invest towards going on and doing things like forming a family.

Now is a critical moment. It is where people see that the chance, aspiration or dream for a better future for themselves is on the line. They are not living that. Of course, unfortunately, the Albanese government is not making that any easier in any of the policies that they are seeking to put forward. In fact, what they are doing is jeopardising the future. You just need to look at the family savings tax that nobody voted for at this election and they are now throwing on the table. With so many small-business people—people who backed themselves in, who have sacrificed and saved to get themselves ahead—they are putting a family savings tax on unrealised capital gains that particularly hits small business and the assets where people have put them into superannuation. They are now going to attack the very basis on which people have sacrificed to be able to secure their long-term retirement.

When you see those sorts of policies under an egregious attempt at revenue raising by the Labor Party, people know that, once it's applied to super, it will be ported over to other asset structures and other investments. People no longer have confidence that they will be able to invest in the future of this country and for themselves with confidence. That's what's at stake and that's what's on the line. I understand that the government is involved in its little victory lap and crowing about their electoral success, but the reality of what Australians are living out there is very different, and it's time they woke up.

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