Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, right now, right across Australia, inflation is running riot, and Australian consumers and Australian businesses are paying the price. Today I heard a story of a business owner worried about self-harm because he risks losing his business because of the increase in fuel costs. I met a woman in Sans Souci in my electorate in tears, losing her house because she can't make the interest repayments. These are the many stories, the many faces, of this cost-of-living crisis right across Australia—people who don't have a voice, who don't have a voice in this parliament, who can't stand up and change these circumstances. But us in this building, we do. We do have a voice. We can do something about it.

Prior to this fuel crisis, Australia was not well-positioned. We had the highest inflation of any advanced economy in the world. Australians rightly expect a national government should be sheltering them, protecting them from external shocks. Instead, Treasurer Chalmers has left the Australian people, the Australian business owners, flailing in the wind with the highest inflation in the advanced world, more than the US, more than the UK, more than the EU, more than Japan, more than Canada, more than any other advanced nation. We're out there flailing in the wind for this fuel shock to come along and hit us, and it's going to hit us harder than any of those countries because of where this Treasurer has left us. And what has he done in his time? He's increased government spending to a 40-year high, the highest that it has ever been since 1986 outside the pandemic. The Reserve Bank Governor herself admitted that this is adding pressure to inflation and interest rates. This is contributing to that poor man I heard talking about self-harm for his trucking business.

See this speech in context