Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

Another term for inflation is 'cost of living'. The cost-of-living crisis in Australia is much worse than it is in many other countries because our inflation rate is much higher than it is in many other countries. With the inflation rate that came out recently, Australia's annual inflation rate is now 3.8 per cent. In the United States, it's in the lower half of the twos; it's around 2.4 per cent. The European bloc's actually has a one in front of it; it's 1.9 per cent in the European bloc. What does that mean for the average Australian family? That means cost-of-living pressures in Australia are worse. There's more pressure on families in Australia than there is in many other countries.

The government refuses to accept any responsibility for the cost-of-living crisis in Australia being worse than it is in any other country. When you talk to them about the cost-of-living crisis, they like to talk about a government from five or six years ago, or they like to talk about international things, like the Ukraine et cetera. Certainly, I'm happy to acknowledge that there are things like the Ukraine that will affect the global inflation rate, but that doesn't explain why Australia's is higher than comparable countries. This government have never acknowledged it and said, 'Look, inflation is higher in Australia, and these are the reasons, we think.' They will not accept or acknowledge it.

I'll mention it just in passing, but we can't not mention the fact that they went to the 2022 election promising a $275 reduction in people's power bills. They then made excuses about that. The Prime Minister, from memory, promised it something like 97 times. When he first made that promise, there was a big announcement for it. It was a huge announcement that had the media there and a whole lot of things happening. In answering questions about it, when Labor made that announcement as an election promise, the Prime Minister actually made the claim that it was the best, most extensive modelled campaign election promise since Federation. I think that was the quote—that this wasn't just a random, made-up figure but that a lot of modelling and research had gone into it. Post the election, we never heard about it again. Again, they blame things like the Ukraine war. The Ukraine war was actually happening when they made the promise, but we'll let that one slide as well.

There have been Labor politicians, dare I say it—you know one of them, Speaker—like Peter Beattie. If Peter Beattie got things wrong or made a mistake, do you know what he'd do? He'd admit it. He'd go, 'I've made a mistake,' or, 'We should have done better here.' The state of Queensland I think admired him for doing that. We haven't heard one minister on the other side of this chamber over the last four years ever admit that anything they've ever done was anything but perfect, and we know that that's far from the truth. I encourage the government to admit that they're not perfect, to admit that some of their policy failings are real, to acknowledge those and to apologise for them. They should apologise for the fact that they haven't delivered the $275 energy cost decrease which they said they were going to deliver. In fact, most people's average energy bills have gone up by a thousand dollars over this period, not down by $275. They should apologise for it and acknowledge the fact that they have had some input into these inflationary pressures, which a lot of people and a lot of economists are saying stem from spending.

I also want to say that this government is very dangerous in running a roulette game on our energy policy with their net-zero-by-2050 policy. I personally believe we should do our fair share of carbon emission reductions. Our better, cheaper, fairer policy is about matching OECD averages in reductions in emissions. We think we should do that. But this government is racing ahead and is going to lower emissions more than nearly any other country in the world with the reductions that they have for 2035.

I also want to highlight that it's important to acknowledge the three biggest emitters in the world—the US, China and India—because they more than anyone will have the most impact on this. Not one of those three countries is signed up to net zero 2050. Nine trillion dollars has been modelled for the cost of that program, and that's a whole-of-economy cost, because obviously there are going to be costs in a whole lot of different sectors. Some of it will be private costs and some of it will be government costs, but that has been modelled across the whole sector. Again, I can tell you right now that that plan is not going to make the cost of living for Australians any better either.

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