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

I enjoyed the audition from the assistant minister for the Treasurer's job. The Albanese government has an economic model. It is to stoke inflation then tax the inflation. What we have now, with this government, is a complete failure of leadership about the type of country we should want to be, where we want to go and what we need to build for a more confident Australia for the next generation.

No-one is under any illusion that we aren't in difficult international circumstances. Poor nations are weak nations. We need to be bold, we need to be confident, and we need to be strong as a country. That happens when we are prosperous, and Australian families, communities and small business are strong. When Australian families, small business and communities are weak, we have the foundations of a weaker nation.

What we're not getting right now is the leadership we desperately need to confront this crisis. We've witnessed it in this chamber, where we've had the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, who's come in here—and it was only less than a month ago—and said, 'There is no supply crisis for fuel.' Everyone on the opposition benches was, allegedly, making it all up. He couldn't see the reality of the risk to supply chains, that when oil stopped being dug out of the ground in the Middle East and refined then, eventually, that might lead into what comes out of the bowser. He said that there were no supply problems. Within three days, he was back in the chamber in a humiliating backdown, having to acknowledge that there was now a national crisis.

Now, every day, he comes into this chamber and has to explain to the Australian people just how many petrol stations are running out of petrol and running out of diesel. It is the economic model of the Albanese government. There is plenty of fuel for inflation, just not for farmers and families. They stoke inflation in the economy and then they tax the inflation and push Australian standards of living backwards. Inflation continues to outstrip wages, and Australian standards of living are going backwards.

They have no answers to these problems, whether it is the Prime Minister, the Treasurer or the energy minister, in an environment of what they have now dubbed a crisis. We have inflation raging, and their only answer is how they keep pouring debt petrol on the inflation fire, and Australian standards of living are declining in the process.

What we need now is real leadership. We don't need the dithering. We don't need the appointment of commissars, tsars or statutory officers so that, in only a few months' time, when the full consequences of the Prime Minister's leadership or the absence of his leadership are revealed, they have somebody to sack. The Australian people voted for this government, in disproportionate numbers of seats, to stand up and steward the nation at a difficult time. But we have seen none of that—and we shouldn't be surprised, because the pattern since the election has been that, when there are difficult times ahead and when there are difficult circumstances to confront, the Prime Minister scurries out of this chamber and the Treasurer scurries out of this chamber as quickly as possible. If a difficult question is asked, their only answer is bluster and attack of the opposition, not responsibility and leadership.

We've seen that just in the context of the ongoing problem, the one they refuse to acknowledge, which is $15 billion of public money being handed to organised crime through the CFMEU-Labor cartel. If a prime minister won't take an audit of or be accountable for that public money and won't show the basic test of leadership—which is that public money shouldn't go to organised crime. Public money shouldn't go to organised crime. When you don't have that basic test of leadership under this prime minister, how can the Australian people have confidence in any other measure that they are going to take by turning a blind eye, wilful ignorance or complete disinterest?

As we head to Easter, there are so many families who are already looking at the cost of Easter eggs, the cost of groceries, the cost of a simple holiday—we're not talking about lavish ones. We're talking about going to a caravan park. They're saying, 'Can we afford it this Easter, and will we even be in a position to afford it next Easter?' The Australian people are living with the failure of leadership by this prime minister, and they are, sadly, going to live with it for much time to come. (Time expired)

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