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

I'm going to do something completely contrarian today for this chamber. I am going to congratulate the Albanese government. Let's start by congratulating them on securing enough fuel and solving the Middle East crisis. Australians don't have to worry about fuel. Everything is fine. We have more fuel than we had at the start of this crisis. I'd like to congratulate the Albanese government on introducing a non-inflationary excise cut for fuel and the road user charge. There are no inflationary offsets, but they have managed to achieve the economically impossible, which is to make it non-inflationary—according to the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers.

I'd like to congratulate the Albanese government on stopping all of the fraud and corruption in the NDIS. Despite the National Disability Insurance Agency projecting that 10 per cent of the NDIS is going towards fraud and corruption, the Albanese government has now solved it. Public money is back in safe hands. I'd like to congratulate them on stopping all of the issues around fraud in aged care, estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I'd like to congratulate the Albanese government on stopping all of the fraud in the childcare system which is continually being reported. And, of course, I've got to give them full credit and congratulate them on finally stopping all of the public money going to organised crime through the CFMEU-Labor cartel.

Congratulations to the Albanese government on all the measures they are taking. Oh, it's 10.18 on 1 April. It's April Fools' Day. April fools on the Australian people for the reality of the Albanese government. We know full well the scale of the price Australians are now paying under the Albanese government. We've seen the highest public spending in 40 years outside of a recession and a pandemic. We've seen inflation continue to rise despite the government saying that we have turned the corner. We've had 14 interest rate rises under Labor, and Australians continue to pay the price of the Albanese government, with $27,000 more in the cost of a mortgage each year.

At the same time, we've seen debt race towards a trillion dollars. It started under the 'Padawan Treasurer' and now the Treasurer, where we're seeing up to $50,000 a minute just to service that debt. Australia has had a decade of lost productivity, where the only economic improvement has come as a consequence of population growth, and the standard of living continues to decline. As we head towards the federal budget, so many Australians are going to look at this budget and say, 'Am I going to be better off after the federal budget?' The truth is that, at the moment, the only thing they're going to get is higher taxes to pay for organised crime.

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