Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I completely associate myself with the remarks of my good friend and colleague the member for Casey, who highlighted the impact of the declining health of our economy on families, small businesses and the broader community. Australians are suffering right now. Many people in my electorate of Monash are doing it incredibly tough. Just last week I was volunteering at Frankies Community Kitchen, who do a terrific job of looking after people in need. I cracked a few hundred eggs during my shift, and the volunteers there enjoy good tunes and good company as they do incredibly important work. Frankies Community Kitchen are preparing 1,230 meals a day for people in need, and that need is continuing to rise. Frankies Community Kitchen supports a number of other food banks in the area, like Longwarry Foodbank. But the demand on those services is at unprecedented levels and is showing no sign of slowing.

The reason I raise this is food banks are the canary in the cage for how the rest of the economy is travelling. Right now, it's a very bleak picture. Labor have presided over the biggest collapse in living standards in the developed world, and they're continuing to spend. You won't see any fiscal discipline or budget control from this Treasurer. Labor are well and truly on their way to leaving a $1.2 billion debt bomb for the next generation—for young people who already see owning their own home as a dream that gets further and further away, into the distant future. Every minute Australians are paying $50,000 on the interest payments of this federal Labor government. This is not just at a federal level—don't even get me started on the Victorian state Labor government—because spending other people's money is the Labor way. Victoria's debt is out of control. It's more than the states of Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania combined. The Victorian Labor government is paying $21 million a day in interest payments, and that is projected to climb to $29 million a day over the next three to four years.

Labor have demonstrated an absolute collapse of fiscal discipline, and everyday Australians are wearing the consequences. These figures are mind-boggling. You could build a new West Gippsland hospital within one week on the amount of money we're talking about. Every dollar that is spent on repaying Labor's debt is a dollar that we are not investing in schools, hospitals and regional roads in electorates like mine. You couldn't run a small business like this. You couldn't run a big business like this. You certainly could not run a household budget like this, but everyday Australians are paying the consequences.

The former governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe, said that inflation remains high because of Labor's spending. When he was governor, he diplomatically said that inflation remained sticky and that it was a homegrown problem—in other words, government spending was too high. There seems to be an invisible ring around Australia such that anyone outside of metropolitan areas falls into Labor's 'no care zone'. Our plight and our challenges are invisible to this Labor government.

Shortly after I was elected, I wrote a letter to the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers. I wrote on behalf of drought impacted farmers in my electorate. They are doing it really tough. For many, this drought has depleted not just financial but mental reserves. I asked the Treasurer to please prevail upon the ATO to show leniency to drought stressed farmers who had been forced to sell their stock early and would have a resulting ATO debt bill that reflected this. Those farmers are doing it really tough. I'll tell you what response I got. It wasn't a response from the Treasurer; it was just a standard proforma fact sheet from the ATO. It didn't even address the concerns that I had raised. That is the level of interest and care shown to farmers right across Australia by this government.

My farmers in Monash are struggling, and I say to them: I will keep fighting for you, and the coalition will keep fighting for you. This Labor government has let you down, and you deserve so much better.

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