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

That's cute, Deputy Speaker! However, the member for Monash always has something of value to add to this conversation, and so we welcome her interjection, it being correct, because she is highlighting and reinforcing the central point.

The Australian people need a government that's on their side. At the moment, they have a government which has only one objective: rigging the rules in favour of their friends. They want to give tax concessions and tax benefits to the renewable energy industry, because they are the donors to their movement and to other political movements associated with them. They can't deliver on things, like a $275 reduction in power bills, that they promised to the Australian people, so their answer is to use public money and move it over to industry to try to reduce costs for them at the expense of the rest of the economy.

At every point, this government focuses only on how to favour its friends. We saw it yesterday when the Assistant Treasurer went and gave a speech to the National Press Club. Lo and behold, all the benefits, all of the subsidies, all of the assistance, all the rules and all the regulations—where did they all go to? They went to their friends in industry super funds while they left actual financial advisers, self-managed superannuants, people who use retail products and anyone who doesn't sit outside the corrupt Labor ecosystem completely adrift. And now we see this with this bill as well, where they've snuck in what we'll call Easter eggs but, let's face it; could be poison pills, which are taxes, which would be increased on some people while they exempt the industries that they want to prosper and succeed, because it benefits them and they are reinforced by the borrowing that their mates in industry super funds—nudge, nudge, wink, wink—are financing. So they're trying to rig the rules again to favour their mates.

This government has a perverse obsession with how they make sure they get outcomes they want to improve the financial wellbeing of the people associated with them. We know this, of course, because, every time there's a public project that needs public money and it's got the CFMEU involved and they're taking out graft and corruption every step of the way, the Prime Minister opens the chequebook and says, 'How much do you want for that public project' along the way. We've seen this in Victorian's Big Build, the suburban rail loop, a scheme that's known as involved with corruption and organised crime. The federal government continues to pour money into the scheme. It's often funded by debt. Yes, this is a Treasury bill and talking about tax is an incredibly important part of it, because tax is something you raise from the public that then gets spent. So what does the government do? They tax the Australian people. They raise the revenue. They then spend it on public projects, and very often that money has ended up in the hands of organised crime. Even worse than that, we've seen today that the government continues to issue bonds, raise public debt, pass the cost on to future generations and then spend it today.

They stoke inflation, then tax inflation, then spend the inflation in a vicious cycle so the government can keep taking more and more tax revenue silently, without having to change a single law before this country. What we have now is a government run by inflation addicts, inflation junkies. They're tapping their veins trying to find out where they can inject the next round of inflation. We've got the Prime Minister walking down to the Treasury building and looking to see if there are a couple of shoes hanging from the powerlines ahead, looking to see whether there is any more inflation they can inject into the system that is undermining the Australian people.

And what are we seeing? On average, Australians going backwards $1,600 a year in the life of this government. This government is addicted to spending, and it's addicted to inflation. Any pathway where they can find more money they can take from the Australian people to feed that addiction, to empower themselves, is part of the perpetual cycle that they run. They're not focused on how to grow the economy. They're not focused on how to build industry. They're not even focused on how to create jobs. Do you remember, once the Labor Party focused on how they create the number of jobs in the economy?

Unemployment is up. Inflation is up. While cost of living continues to rise, standards of living are going backwards under this government. This is the problem—

We're now hearing the interjections. We heard from the last deputy speaker that no interjections should be welcomed, but we're hearing it now from the Labor Party because it's touching a very raw nerve. They know the inflation addiction that this government has directly undermines the economic welfare of the Australian people. Their only answer is how they take a bigger chunk of the Australian tax revenue for themselves, and how they do it—

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