Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Just think about the challenges Australian families are facing right now. You've got parents who are waiting patiently as they turn up to the petrol station, wondering what the cost is going to be to fill up their car, wondering whether there's going to be any fuel. In New South Wales, we know that 10 per cent—based on the minister's answers in question time today—are absent of fuel and waiting.

Australians are waiting at the supermarket to see whether they can afford to pay the final bill as they scan the items. Increasingly, we hear many Australian families choose the self-checkout lane to stop the humiliation they will feel if they have to return an item from their basket. They are waiting to see whether they can afford the bill. They are waiting to see whether there's going to be a situation in the future where they're going to be able to continue to afford their mortgage. They're seeing inflation continue to rage, interest rates continue to rise and looking at their diminishing bank account under this government and wondering how much longer they're going to have.

The experience around the country is real. There has been a 16 per cent increase in food prices since the election of this government, and 166 petrol stations are now out of fuel. We know that, as inflation continues to rage, households are going to feel the pinch, and they're going to look to the future and wonder whether they can get ahead. There is a follow through from events overseas, but there is also a follow through specifically from what people are living with right now.

I'll ask a simple question. What do these things have in common: the lowest consumer confidence on record; expected highest inflation on record; highest small business insolvencies on record; record government spending outside a war or pandemic; record taxpayers' money handed to organised crime; record taxpayers' money provided to corruption rather than to essential services like the NDIS, health care and child care; and record jobs created by public spending? The one thing all these things have in common is the Albanese government, because this government is running Australia into the ground. They are not seeking to boost it or to grow growth or opportunity for the next generation of Australians. All they are hearing from this government is excuses.

If only you could fill your car with the minister for energy's excuses. If only you could buy a home with the Prime Minister's excuses, and if only you could pay off your mortgage with the Treasurer's excuses. Australians know right now the pain that they are living with under this Albanese government, and they know because they know the consequences, as the RBA governor only last week said, are material. After announcing an interest rate hike off the back of inflation data from the second half of last year, the RBA governor made it crystal clear that, unfortunately, we may not have seen the end of this inflation pressure and interest rate hikes.

We want Australians to look to the future with confidence and hope, but they are being dragged down by a bad government that is running Australia into the ground, and this is the problem Australians are facing right now. The government, in a point of arrogance and hubris, continues to pour debt petrol on the inflation fire. They continue record spending, and no matter how much and how many times they're called out by economists or the Reserve Bank governor, the only response from the Albanese government is to try and bully their critics into silence.

There is a compelling reason why Australians must stand up and call that out, and they are standing up and calling it out, because they know that they are living with the consequences of this government's agenda. More to the point, they know that when the government runs out of money, they will come after Australians' money instead. If they run out of money, they come after yours. That's the problem with the Albanese government. Even worse than that, while Australian households are going to the supermarket and wondering if they can afford the next 15 bucks or 30 bucks in their trolley or in their red basket, the Albanese government is a participant in providing $15 billion to $30 billion to organised crime through the CFMEU-Labor cartel. Their only solution to that is to turn around and go after more Australians' money as they float new taxes and new charges in the forthcoming federal budget.

I think we need to put this in perspective—the scale of the problem this country has under the Albanese government and the CFMEU-Labor cartel. So I thought the best place to look was Transparency International's '25 corruption scandals that shook the world'. I'll go through each of them, one by one, and identify where it is that the CFMEU-Labor cartel handing billions to organised crime sits in the rankings of the most corrupt regimes on earth.

The lowest one they came up with was the Nigerian prince arrangements. They came in at about $5 million.

See this speech in context