Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

It actually genuinely is with great sadness that I stand today, because Australia, today, has received some very bad news. I think first and foremost of the families who have come through Christmas and whose family budgets are looking awful. They've been dropping the kids off to school. They don't know whether or not they have to forego takeouts or school sport. They're having to buy the shoes, the uniforms and the textbooks. They're struggling. Today, they received the news from the Reserve Bank of Australia that interest rates are going up. I don't know how bad this has to get for the Australian people before the Albanese government starts taking this matter seriously.

Throughout question time today, despite this being the most important issue facing Australians, we had continuous hubris from the Prime Minister and giggles and laughs and jokes from the frontbench of the Labor government. Meanwhile, the Australian people are struggling. It might be true, of course, that most Australians aren't going to be glued into question time, but it does go to the character of those who are running this country. The fact that the Treasurer continues to refuse to take any responsibility for the fact that interest rates are going up due to his spending spree—I can't find a credible economist in the country who is not saying that the Albanese government isn't overspending. All economists are saying they are overspending, and the more they spend, the more it's basically putting pressure on the RBA to lift rates.

This government cannot stop spending. This is the highest spending government in 40 years, outside a pandemic. In 40 years, no government has spent as much as this government. It's an extraordinary amount. Spending as a percentage of GDP has gone from 24 per cent to 27 per cent—amazing! Every single time we see an economist come out say the government is overspending and it's driving up interest rates, the Treasurer denies it. And who are the ones who lose? It's the Australian people.

Spending is so bad that, last week, we revealed a $60 billion black hole in Labor's government. That is a deterioration of $60 billion since the election. Did they come forward and transparently tell the Australian people about this? No, they didn't. We had to go and find it. We had to go and find it in the MYEFO report that they laid down in December. They want to keep it a secret—$60 billion. To put that in context, that's around the size of our entire defence budget. But here's the thing, when the Treasurer has been asked to explain that deterioration, he hasn't known the answer. So spending is so bad the majority of that $60 billion, according to the official figures, is due to more spending, but the Treasurer himself doesn't know what he's going to spend that money on. This is how bad it is. In fact, when he was challenged to explain, he tried to brush it off and say it's only a small deterioration. Since when is $60 billion a small deterioration? We know economist after economist is coming forward and saying that this government is overspending.

We have also revealed that, in this financial year alone, there is an additional $50 billion being spent by the Albanese government on discretionary items. We're not talking here about health, education, the NDIS and social welfare. We're not talking about those pressures on the budget. We are separately talking about cabinet ministers sitting around the table and deciding on separate initiatives. Governments have every right—they are entitled to decide what they want to spend the money on, but they have an obligation to find offsets in the budget, and this is what they are not doing. They are pouring more money into the economy. The economy has capped out with a speed limit, but they keep putting money in, forcing the Reserve Bank to come in and take money out. And how do they do that? They do that by increasing interest rates. This is why it is the responsibility of this government. But they refuse to take responsibility.

So let's not take this debate today really as being the Labor Party versus the Liberal Party. This is about the Labor Party versus the Australian people. This is the Labor Party against Australian families. This is the Labor Party going to hardworking Australian families, taxing them more, taking more money out of their pockets to feed a spending spree, forcing interest rates up—and then they have to pay higher mortgages. That's this problem.

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