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

Today is a sad day for millions of Australians. As they finish their work and drive home—or catch the train or a tram if they're in Melbourne—they'll be hearing over the radio about how the Reserve Bank has increased interest rates off the back of inflationary data that shows that the government has lost all control of its fiscal purse strings. Australians are going to receive this news at a time when their Christmas credit card is coming and when they've just paid for new uniforms and books and all the other costs of kids going to school for the new school year. There has never been a time in Australian history where people can less afford to absorb higher interest rates, particularly families who are only just getting their head above the financial water.

But, unfortunately, the Reserve Bank has delivered some terrible news to those households today. And, of course, we know it will be passed on by the banks quickly. While the government want to defer responsibility and say they are not to blame, that simply isn't the case. Even IFM Investors' chief economist has said, 'The fiscal guardrails have come off.' Time and time again we have heard from economists that it's government expenditure at both the state and federal level that is driving inflation. Debt spending of borrowing from tomorrow to fund today is driving the inflationary pressure and the pressure that sits on the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates.

You can see it in the headlines of only a few days ago, where it was reported that the government got its projections around expenditure $57 billion off. Well, Deputy Speaker Claydon, have you ever watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the episode with the Black Knight? I think they, on the other side of this chamber, in the Albanese government, are trying to pretend that it's a fiscal flesh wound. It is so much more serious, because, when you borrow from the future to spend for today, you have too much money chasing too few goods and services, so prices rise and interest rates go up. And that's precisely what is happening under this government.

We know it's not just their fiscal recklessness; it's also industrial relations inflation. They come into this parliament every single time and make the case about why they need to increase the costs on employers, directly attacking the root and branch of small business in this country. That's why, off the back of inflationary data, you don't just see a rise in the cost of prices of goods and services; you also see it in tax rates, where so many state governments now engage in the active process of taxation inflation to increase the charges that are going on small business.

Households are doing it tough. Small business are doing it tough. What does the Labor Party say? 'There's nothing to see here. It has nothing to do with us.' Well, that isn't the lived experience of the 40,000 small businesses that have gone insolvent under the Albanese government. They can't bear the cost any more of higher interest rates, higher inflation, higher industrial relations inflation and higher taxation inflation—15,000 in the past year alone, a record in Australian history since records have been kept. And I can tell you, Deputy Speaker, that I would never come into this parliament and boast, as members of the Labor Party have, about how I'm such a successful economic manager when 15,000 Australian households lost their capacity to be able to fund their costs last year, lost the pathway to be able to support their families. It isn't something to be proud of. It is an absolute disgrace. Forty thousand Australians have lost their incomes since this Labor Party came to government. Labor have their priorities wrong.

I hear so many Labor members screaming out, 'Well, what would you cut?' I'll make it crystal clear: we would not resist for one second cutting the cartel kickbacks that the Labor government wants to pass on to the CFMEU, which is increasing the cost and passing it on to Australian taxpayers and consumers. We know the Labor Party is compromised after the Prime Minister said previously that he would never accept donations from the CFMEU, and in the ABC disclosures he was exposed for telling a fib. We know directly that the Prime Minister has now been caught out misleading the public—and why? So they can continue the cartel kickbacks from taxpayers' dollars at the state and federal level, funded by Australians, to the CFMEU, who have direct connections to bikie gangs and organised crime. Taxpayers' money should never land in the hands of organised crime or bikie gangs, but this seems completely irrelevant. There is only one pathway through this: we must change the government.

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