Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I always love going back to my electorate after coming to Canberra, although I do really appreciate and relish the opportunity that I've been given to represent, in this place, the people of McPherson. But this time I'll be going back to McPherson with some bad news, and it's bad news in relation to the state of our economy. As we're all aware, we've seen a yet another—the 13th—interest rate rise in Australia.

It's well known and well documented that we're going through a housing crisis, and I have the opportunity every now and then to speak to many people, especially young people, across my electorate who are struggling to get into their first home. But I also have the ability at times to speak to people who have managed to get into their first home, and now they're presented with an increase to their repayments and with yet another barrier to real wage growth as well. What we're seeing by this Labor government is no real growth strategy. Consistent with Labor ideology, we're seeing the constant redistribution of what we already have. As somebody who represents the next generation, I think we need to set our sights higher. Not only that, we need to make sure that this government takes responsibility for where it hasn't been able to achieve what is required by the Australian people.

Let's look at the state of this economy. We're looking at inflation rates at the moment, and inflation in this country sits at 3.8 per cent, which is significantly above the target range of two to three per cent. We've seen the Assistant Treasurer, Daniel Mulino, recently say that it's actually a global phenomenon at the moment. Well, if you actually look at where Australia sits, Australia and the UK are now the only two countries in the developed world where inflation sits above three per cent. So it is 0.8 percentage points above the upper range of where it should be in Australia. And not only that, but we all saw the commentary by economists in the lead-up to the rate rise on Tuesday. It was predicted, and it was predicted because of what we've seen in this country from this government. It's the reckless spending that has continued under Labor. We've seen the budget continue to blow out. Before this Labor government, the previous biggest budget blowout in spending was $10 billion, but now we're seeing a budget blowout that is more than five times that.

I've sat in question time time and time again, and I've seen the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, talking about how he's using your money, which you provide as taxpayers, to subsidise the installation of home batteries. The program was originally costed at $2.3 billion, but it's now blown out to $12.3 billion in just six months. That's a blow-out of over $10 billion. You cannot trust this Labor government to spend your money wisely. They're also using your money to subsidise the electric vehicle preferences of some. Originally, that was estimated to cost $90 million this financial year, but it's now coming in at a cost of around $1.35 billion, yet another example of how you can't trust this Labor government to spend your money wisely.

The bottom line is that all of this government spending is keeping our interest rates and our inflation at the highest levels in the developed world, and that has real, tangible consequences. I see those, and I'm sure my colleagues across the board here see those when they go back to their electorates and they're presented with the problems that our constituents face on a daily basis. We must hold this Labor government to account, because the reason that we are in the situation that we are in and that this economy is in the situation it's in is that we've got a government that is not prepared to act within the necessary fiscal guardrails that are required to manage inflation and manage reckless spending. I say this: as a country, we need to think seriously, and I urge this government to think seriously about the legacy that it is leaving and the debt burden that it is leaving for the next generation, because, if we're not putting that front and centre of our considerations in this place, something is clearly wrong.

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