Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Sovereign Capability) Share this | Hansard source

The most expensive sound in Australia today is the silence of a shopfront where the door no longer swings open. It is the heavy, suffocating silence of a ledger book filled with red ink—a ledger that a small-business owner in Mackay or a farmer in the Burdekin stares at late into the night, wondering what went wrong. A financial crisis arrives in the quiet erosion of a bank balance. It's the unsettling realisation that, despite working long hours, despite cutting every luxury, the numbers simply no longer add up.

For the people I represent, the Australian dream is being replaced by a daily struggle of survival. We heard from the Prime Minister last year that interest rate rises were a thing of the past. We were promised a different path. We remember the Prime Minister standing before the nation making a definite vow; he said life will be cheaper under Labor. But as we stand here in 2026 those promises have been shattered. The reality is that Australians are struggling more today than when the Albanese Labor government came to office. Australians are experiencing a Labor-created cost-of-living crisis. It is a mathematical reality that when this government spends, prices rise and it's the families in our regions who pay the price.

I've been speaking to families right across my electorate of Dawson. They've just finished the back-to-school run, and they are looking at the receipts with genuine fear. They're staring down the barrel of a world where everything costs more. Electricity prices are up, insurance prices are up, grocery prices are up, housing prices are up and mortgage costs are up. Mums and dads across Dawson are feeling poorer because they are poorer. They are being governed by an Albanese administration that cannot stop spending taxpayers' money—and, folks, we all know what that means: when Labor run out of money, they come after yours.

This is the highest-spending government in 40 years outside of a global pandemic, with $50 billion of new discretionary spending in the current financial year alone. If a CEO in the private sector presided over a $50 billion blowout in six months, they would be sacked. Why do we have a lower standard? Why are we holding the Treasurer to a lower standard of accountability? Is it any wonder that inflation is soaring? We're seeing $200 million a day pour out of Canberra, much of it on this reckless renewables-only agenda. It's crazy. Independent experts have made it clear: inflation will be higher for longer in Australia because this government refuses to make the hard decisions. As the price of everything continues to climb, families are forced into heartbreaking trade-offs. They are deciding whether to keep their kids' Saturday sport or keep the lights on. What kind of life is that for our Aussie kids?

Our small businesses, our tradies and our manufacturers are on the front line of this failure. Last year alone, 15,000 small businesses closed. Under the Albanese Labor government, Australia has experienced the largest decline in living standards in the developed world. The Treasurer spent last week in this place claiming that government spending had nothing to do with the latest interest rate hike, yet the RBA governor herself has directly refuted this. She confirmed that government spending is a key driver pushing inflation higher. Mortgage holders have been paying, on average, $21,000 more a year in interest since this government took office. That's an extra $400 a week on the Australian dream. That's unbelievable, and that suggests that the burden will increase even more.

If this treasurer cannot understand the problem, he cannot fix it. Under Labor, we are becoming poorer. We should be a nation of prosperity and growth. Farmers know that you can't harvest what you do not sow and that you cannot spend what you do not have. It is a lesson for this treasurer. He has failed Australia. He has failed the economy. He needs to step up, take responsibility and fix this mess. Stop spending money that we simply do not have.

See this speech in context