Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2025-2026, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2025-2026 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2025-2026. For those watching, these bills are about appropriating funds for the government. These funds are for many worthy projects, no question about that. The coalition will be supporting the bills. However, there are some projects that we don't support and there are savings that do have to be made.

Before I start on government expenditure and fuelling inflation and fuelling higher interest rates—the other day I saw a timely newspaper article about the late, great Peter Walsh, the finance minister in the initial Hawke government years. Peter Walsh was a farmer from Doodlakine in the member for Durack's electorate. I was a young man in the 1990s—I would have been just out of school—when Peter Walsh released his book Confessions of a Failed Finance Minister. I remember reading that book and being amazed at the clarity he had about how important fiscal discipline is and how hard it is. And it is hard as a finance minister, particularly in a Labor government that's more inclined to spend money on social programs et cetera. It's an amazing read. I'd suggest that every member of parliament should read that book, because it really encapsulates what's happening to our economy at the moment and the government's mismanagement of the economy. Peter Walsh outlined what would happen without that fiscal discipline, and we're actually seeing that roll out here today.

The government is showing no restraint, and we're seeing expenditure reaching record levels. In the projected years we've seen expenditure as a percentage of GDP: 26.9 per cent in 2025-26; 26.9 per cent again in 2026-27; and 26.6 per cent in 2027-28. These are record-high levels of government spending to GDP outside of the worst of the pandemic years. We're seeing that starting to manifest itself in the runaway inflation that the Treasurer had assured us was back in the genie's bottle. Sadly, for Australian families, the genie has popped out of the bottle. Looking at the commentary of the Reserve Bank governor, that genie is going to run away from us.

As I said, this is all down to out-of-control government spending. I've got a list of quotes here—I'm going to run out of time, so I won't quote them all—where various economists are squarely pointing the finger at government expenditure fuelling inflation. I just want to run through some numbers that Australian families are all too aware of. After four years of Labor, we've got insurance up 39 per cent, energy prices up 38 per cent, rents are up 22 per cent, health costs are up 18 per cent, education costs are up 17 per cent and food prices are up 16 per cent. These are not luxuries; these are essentials of everyday life that Australian families are having to deal with. On top of that, we're about to see mortgage rates rise. They were quite high, and we did have a little bit of relief there for a few months. I think we've had 12 interest rate rises, and we had three cuts. Now we've had one rise, and we're back on the way up, which is very hard for Australian families to absorb into their budgets.

I want to talk about Western Australia for a minute—the great state of WA, which is the engine room of our economy—and I'll come to that in a minute. I'm so glad I've got my friend the member of Durack here.

In last Thursday's West Australian, under the headline 'Bill shock for WA families', it was reported that WA is experiencing some of the highest inflation rates in the nation. The West Australian reported that inflation in Western Australia was running at 4.9 per cent in January 2026, up from 4.4 per cent in December 2025. There are plenty of economists there who would point the finger at government spending as the cause of that. But what that means to families across Western Australia, particularly regional Western Australia, is that, in the past 12 months, child care is up 13 per cent and children's clothing is up nearly seven per cent. At the checkout, beef and lamb are up 12 and 14 per cent respectively. These are everyday costs that families are having to absorb, and they're very hard for those hardworking families to absorb.

I want to get a bit more local and talk about the electorates of O'Connor and Durack. As I said, it's great to have my friend the member for Durack here in the House. Fifty per cent of Western Australia's mercantile exports leave from Western Australia. Between our two electorates, I'll have to give most of the credit to the member for Durack. Much of that 50 per cent comes from those two electorates in regional WA. I've outlined the costs that our families are having to bear, but the lack of government investment and expenditure in our regions is appalling.

We just heard the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry talk about all the wonderful projects that have been announced and funded in her seat in Tasmania. If you live in the seats of O'Connor and Durack, there is no such thing as 24-hour GP clinics. When we checked a month ago—it may have changed—there were no bulk-billing GP services across my electorate in O'Connor. So, despite producing the bulk of the nation's wealth, we're missing out on all of the fruit of that labour. That might be politically expedient, but let me tell you, Deputy Speaker, that getting people to come and live in those small regional and remote towns, to work on the mines and to work on the farms which produce the wealth of this nation, is getting harder and harder. They're looking at the services that people in Labor held seats in the city are getting and thinking: 'Why am I living out here, where I can't get my children to see a doctor? Why wouldn't I go and live in the city and get access to all these services that are popping up all over the place?'

This is an issue that's more than just political expediency. We all understand that, when you're in government, you look after your people, your side. I'm sure there are a few whiteboards around the place. This is an important issue in terms of our country's economic wellbeing. You would know well, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we need services out in the regional areas so that people will live there and develop our nation.

There are a couple of programs that I'll mention in the last minute or so available to me. Last Friday night I joined Co-operative Bulk Handling and about 1,000 WA grain growers to celebrate a 27.2 million tonne grain crop. The problem now is getting that crop to port. There were two programs that the Morrison government were running to assist that enormous freight task. One was called the agricultural supply chain infrastructure fund, and the other one was called the Wheatbelt Secondary Freight Network. These were funds of well over $100 million that were investing in the infrastructure required to get that crop to port and to get billions of dollars of income in for the government. They have been cut under this government, and that is going to make the task for those amazing wheat growers even harder.

Debate interrupted.

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