Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Sovereign Capability) Share this | Hansard source

Regional Australia has done the heavy lifting to line the pockets of this Treasury. Yet where has that record revenue gone? It has vanished, into the insatiable appetite of the Labor government's coffers. It has been spent on absolutely nothing that helps the ordinary family survive this crisis. Instead of using this windfall to structurally repair our economy, pay down our massive national debt or build wealth-generating infrastructure in the regions, the Treasurer has locked in an aggregate deficit of a staggering $150.5 billion over the forward estimates for the period 2029 to 2030. The underlying cash deficit for this immediate period starts at a staggering $28.3 billion and climbs even higher over the forward estimates. This government has pulled off a disastrous double. It is spending record amounts of public money, while leaving our economy weaker than ever.

Does this government simply not understand that people are hurting? People are facing genuine, raw desperation. They are angry. They are frustrated. And they feel completely abandoned by the Prime Minister, who promised them a $275 reduction in their electricity bills, a promise repeated 97 times, which—surprise, surprise!—was an untruth.

Broken promises have been the theme of this budget, because, in the Labor playbook, every single time a promise is broken, the taxpayer is the one who picks up the tab. Labor's only solution to the widespread desperation of the people of this great nation is to tax them even more and introduce sweeping changes to capital gains tax, negative gearing and the taxation of trusts that will penalise investment and drive a knife through the heart of domestic productivity.

Don't take my word for it. Some of the most respected independent economic minds in the country are looking at this budget with absolute contempt. They see a Labor government who's completely abandoned fiscal discipline. In a sobering post-budget analysis, the economic team at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia said that this budget represents a massive missed opportunity in the fight against inflation. At the exact moment inflation is peaking, Labor is still printing and spending more money, throwing debt fuel on a fire that is already burning through family budgets. The Reserve Bank of Australia itself has dropped diplomatic subtlety in an assessment of this fiscal recklessness. The Reserve Bank's own board minutes show that they are deeply worried that the government's spending is sabotaging the fight against inflation. The writing is on the wall, and the RBA have warned that, if this reckless spending doesn't stop, high inflation will be locked into the economy.

Financial models are now forecasting a further cash rate increase in the upcoming September quarter of 2026, a move that will automatically push repayments even higher for families who are already at their absolute breaking point. Across the country, business leaders have reacted with equal fury to this tax-heavy agenda. They have blown the whistle, warning that this budget drops an absolute tax bomb on small business. They are pointing out that the changing tax rules overnight will completely destroy local confidence, especially when our small-business operators are already battling a brutal surge in their everyday running costs.

You cannot tax a nation into prosperity, and you cannot stabilise an economy by dropping a tax bomb on the very people who take the risks and create local jobs. The most cynical, damaging aspect of the budget is the way it systematically snuffs the light out on aspirational young Australians. Think about a young worker in Dawson today. They aren't doing it tough; they are trapped on an economic treadmill they cannot outrun. They face skyrocketing utility bills and they face the constant looming threat of endless rent rises thanks to soaring inflation. They are taking on second jobs only to watch their hard earned cash get cannibalised by bracket creep. The game is completely rigged against them.

No-one is safe from the Albanese agenda to increase taxes on the people of this country. When a worker puts in overtime, this government treats them like a target to be plundered. When will this government learn? When you penalise effort, you simply get less of it. This budget completely crushes the ambition of youth, trapping them in a permanent rental cycle and telling them having a go is no longer worth the struggle. The Albanese Labor government is taking the tools that make wealth away from our youth. If you want to see where our national wealth is being completely wasted, look no further than the multibillion-dollar black hole of Labor's net zero obsession. Billions of taxpayers funds are being funnelled to green corporate welfare, while giant wind and solar projects destroy our regional forests, lock up our farmland and fracture our communities.

Let us examine the complete economic failure of this energy transition. The government has spent billions of dollars on transmission lines, foreign engineered wind turbines and overseas made solar panels and batteries, yet power bills for ordinary families have jumped by around 40 per cent. It is an extraordinary display of financial incompetence. This Labor government has managed to spend record amounts of public money to make electricity more expensive and less reliable. Without cheap, reliable, continuous baseload energy an industrial economy simply cannot function. Labor's green energy spending is a multibillion-dollar monument to waste, a policy that locks regional Australia into structural disadvantage, while everyday Australians pay the price through sky-high electricity prices.

This brings me straight to the total hypocrisy of this government's big slogan: Future Made in Australia. The hard reality on the ground is that, in heavy industrial hubs like Paget, this policy is an absolute sham. You cannot build, maintain or expand a sovereign manufacturing sector if you do not have access to cheap, reliable, continuous power. It is a physical and economical impossibility. Heavy engineering, advanced steel fabrication, automated assembly and mineral processing require massive amounts of energy. When a government deliberately drives up the cost of that energy through ideological inventions, it makes Australian manufacturing completely unproductive. We are seeing iconic regional smelters, processing plants and chemical facilities across this nation pushed to the absolute edge of operational survival, requiring emergency government interventions and bailouts just to survive.

The fundamental failure of these appropriations is the complete and total lack of basic human empathy. This government simply does not understand the depth of the pain its policies are causing. People are facing genuine, terrifying desperation. The people of regional Australia are angry, and they have every right to be angry. They are deeply frustrated because they feel completely invisible to the Prime Minister, who promised them a better future and delivered nothing but broken words and shattered trust. They were promised a better life. Instead, they've been hit by consecutive interest rate rises that have stripped hundreds of dollars out of their disposable income every single month.

And what is this government's response to the widespread regional suffering? The answer is always the same from Labor: tax them even more. The Albanese Labor government is increasing the tax burden via bracket creep. They're hitting our small business with an investor tax bomb, they're targeting our primary producers with unfair biosecurity levies and they're swinging a green hammer down on our heavy industries. Labor hold some sort of misguided belief that every single economic problem can be solved by seizing more money from the pockets of working Australians and spending it on vanity pet projects. It's an absolute insult to the intelligence of our people. This government has spent billions of dollars on consultants, billions on international climate frameworks, billions on expanding the Public Service, while the hardworking people who keep the wheels of the nation turning are left to drown in their bills.

This cannot continue. A nation that systematically penalises effort, crushes the aspirations of its youth and abandons all semblance of physical discipline is a nation that is actively engineered to its own economic decline. We need an immediate, unconditional return to economic common sense. Labor must stop the reckless public spending that is actively fuelling this inflationary firestorm. We must dismantle the green bureaucracy that is strangling manufacturing, and we must start backing the aspirational Australians who are trying to build a secure life for their children.

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