House debates

Thursday, 28 July 2022

Ministerial Statements

Economy

12:26 pm

Photo of Jim ChalmersJim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | | Hansard source

ERS (—) (): by leave—Australians are overwhelmingly optimistic and confident people. Our optimism, and that confidence, is well founded—because it rests on our ability to navigate difficult times together, and emerge stronger.

Australians know their government changed hands at a time of instability, uncertainty and volatility—around the world and here at home. Today, through this parliament, I want to explain to Australians what this means for you—for your living standards, for your economy, for the budget that funds the services that you rely on. I will explain some of the international factors we are buffeted by; detail the domestic economic and budget pressures we are dealing with; provide some revised Treasury forecasts that try to reflect the circumstances we have inherited, in advance of a full update in the October budget; and outline our plan to deal with these conditions.

This is about giving you the best sense we can of what is really going on, because there is no use tiptoeing around the pressure that people are under. You know what we are up against. You see it every day at the supermarket, in your pay packet, when the electricity bill arrives. And you didn't send us to this place to bury the bad news or gloss over the glaring issues or wish away the warning signs or to pretend that our problems will solve themselves with more waiting, and more wasting time. That approach has already given our country a wasted decade of missed opportunities and messed up priorities. You are already paying too much for that in the form of:

        Nine years of mess can't be cleaned up in nine weeks—it will take time. Australians know that too. And they know that progress begins by us facing up to these hard realities and these hard truths, because only by facing up to these challenges can we transform them into opportunities. And this time of great challenge for our country is also a time of great opportunity, the opportunity to build a stronger and more resilient economy that converts the potential of our people into prosperity for our nation—an economy powered by cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy where more people have the right skills, in secure jobs, with decent wages growing strongly and sustainably, and a better future, built with more opportunities for more Australians in more parts of our country.

        The economy is growing—but so are the challenges. Some are home-grown, others come at us from around the world. As Governor Phil Lowe and I were reminded at the G20 meeting a fortnight ago—the global picture is complex, and the outlook is confronting. The world economy is treading a precarious and a perilous path. Higher global inflation, slower global growth, ongoing conflict and war, the impacts of COVID, clogged supply chains—all of this affects us, in some form.

        At the G20 meeting, the IMF flagged they would again be revising down their global growth forecasts. And this week, they have—significantly downgrading the outlook for global growth in both 2022 and 2023.

        These downgrades are broadly in line with Treasury's updated outlook for the global economy. The Treasury is forecasting global growth of 3¼ per cent in each of the next three years, which is half a percentage point weaker in 2022 and 2023 than expected in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook.

        The IMF is expecting global inflation to reach 8.3 per cent by the end of this year—driven by higher food and energy prices, and strained supply chains.

        In the United States overnight, the Federal Reserve has again raised interest rates by 75 basis points in response to the highest inflation figure recorded in more than 40 years. And tonight, the preliminary US GDP result for the second quarter is again expected to be weak—after falling by 0.4 per cent last quarter.

        China is our biggest trading partner by a long way—what happens with China's domestic economy has a direct link to our national activity, income, and prosperity. China's strict COVID containment measures have had a substantial impact on their output and have made existing supply chain disruptions even more severe.

        As has Russia's unilateral, immoral and illegal invasion of Ukraine, which undermines energy and food security—dramatically pushing up global prices. And all of this puts pressure on our economy and our budget.

        Once again, Australia is outperforming much of the world, but that doesn't make it any easier to pay the bills at home. More Australians are in jobs than ever before—and that's a very welcome outcome—but fewer Australians are feeling confident about the choppy waters our economy is in. Because they see the impact that high inflation is having on their living standards—in an environment where workers aren't getting wage rises sufficient to match price rises.

        Our high inflation is primarily but not exclusively global. It will subside but not overnight. It's been turbocharged by a decade of domestic failures on skills, on energy and on supply chains which just aren't resilient enough. Left untreated, inflation which is too high for too long undermines living standards and jobs, and wrecks economies. But the medicine is also very tough to take—and millions of Australians with a mortgage are feeling that pain right now.

        Rate rises began before the election, and then they rose by a full per cent across June and July, and the independent Reserve Bank has told us to expect more to come. There's no point pretending these rate rises don't hurt—they do and they will. Every extra dollar Australians have to find to service the mortgage is a dollar that can't help meet the high costs of other essentials.

        Governments shouldn't make it harder for the RBA on the demand side but, more than that, we should be working to address problems on the supply side, and we are.

        Some of the conditions determining this inflation problem are outside of Australia's control and largely unavoidable. As much as we can provide support, we can't control the war in Ukraine, or China's COVID policies.

        Floods and new COVID variants bring the supply chain disruptions and worker absences we are experiencing.

        But there are things we can control. And some of these conditions have been building for a long time and were avoidable:

              And let's be really clear about something. Inflation is high, and in the near term it will get higher—but the primary cause of this is not higher wages—nowhere near it.

              We don't have an inflation problem because workers are earning too much or because we are in some kind of a wage-price spiral. Real wages growth over the past decade has averaged just 0.1 per cent a year. In the year to March real wages fell 2.7 per cent—the worst result in more than two decades. In the year to March, real wages fell 2.7 per cent—the worst result in more than two decades. And once wages data for the June quarter is released in a few weeks, it's likely this fall will have accelerated, given yesterday's inflation outcome. The wages of Australian workers are not causing this inflation. The fault lies with a decade of wasted opportunities, wrong priorities and wilful neglect—that Australians are now all paying for.

              This is the context for the updated Treasury forecasts for our economy that I am releasing today. Forecasts are never perfect, but these better reflect the economic circumstances our new government is now dealing with—compared with what was set out before the election.

              In the pre-election forecasts—released a little more than three months ago—inflation was expected to peak at 4¼ per cent. It's already at 6.1 per cent through the year to June, and now forecast to peak at 7¾ per cent in the December quarter this year. The current expectation is that it will get worse this year, moderate next year and normalise the year after. We haven't reached the peak yet, but we can see it from here.

              Treasury expects headline inflation at 5½ per cent by the middle of next year, 3½ per cent by the end of 2023 and 2¾ per cent by the middle of 2024—back inside the RBA's target range. Inflation will unwind again, but not in an instant. Just as the domestic forces contributing to some of the supply-side pressures have been building for the best part of a decade, it will take some time for them to dissipate—but they will.

              In the meantime, higher interest rates, combined with the global slowdown that I've described, will impact on Australia's economic growth. The national accounts in the March quarter showed that the economy had not been performing as strongly as had been predicted pre-election—we saw 0.8 per cent growth instead of the 1.8 per cent growth they told us to expect. And the headwinds that our economy is facing—higher inflation at the top of that list, along with that slowing global growth—are now reflected in the revised economic outcomes and forecasts. This has cut half a percentage point from growth for the last financial year, for this financial year and for next financial year.

              It's expected that real GDP grew by 3¾ per cent in 2021-22, instead of 4¼ per cent as was estimated pre-election. The pre-election forecast for GDP growth in 2022-23 was 3½ per cent. This has now been revised down to three per cent growth. And growth is expected to slow further in 2023-24, at two per cent—down from the 2½ per cent that was previously predicted.

              A key part of this weaker growth outlook is due to weaker consumption, which is all about higher inflation and higher interest rates. While some households have built up savings buffers, others are under much more pressure. Net exports will also be a bigger-than-expected drag on growth in the near term—because flooding hits commodity exports and because imports increase when businesses restock. Weaker dwelling investment is also part of the story—because of higher interest rates but also because of those capacity constraints that we're seeing in construction. That's what I mean by a growing economy but one with growing challenges as well.

              This complex picture is reflected in the updated outlook for unemployment and wages. The unemployment rate is expected to remain low through the latter half of this year before returning to 3¾ per cent by June 2023 and four per cent by June 2024.

              At the same time, the forecast for nominal wages growth is being upgraded—from 3¼ per cent to 3¾ per cent—for both this financial year and next financial year. If this eventuates—and I'm careful, cautious and conscious of the history here—it would be the fastest pace of nominal wages growth in about a decade.

              The harsh truth is that households won't feel the benefits of higher wages while inflation eats up these wage increases, and then some. Real wages growth relies on moderating inflation and getting wages moving again. On the basis of current forecasts, real wages are expected to start growing again in 2023-24. But there is a key difference now. Australian workers now have a government with an economic plan to boost wages, not deliberately undermine them.

              Our new government has begun its work in this time of serious uncertainty and the substantial challenges as I've described them, with a trillion-dollar handicap in our saddlebags.

              The budget we inherited is bursting with waste and rorts, booby-trapped by expiring measures, and burdened by long-term demographic challenges that come with critical and necessary spending.

              While the final budget outcome for 2021-22—published quite soon—is likely to show a dramatically better-than-expected outcome for that year, it's temporary factors like supply chain disruptions, capacity constraints and extreme weather which have delayed some of the planned spending—and now low unemployment and those volatile commodity prices, which are boosting revenue. These are factors that will not last forever—or even for long.

              The short-, medium- and longer-term pressures on the budget are more pronounced. The temporary improvement in tax receipts may not persist over time, the impact on payments will persist, and the cost of interest on debt will grow as more debt is refinanced at higher interest rates.

              A full set of fiscal forecasts will be ready for the October budget. But we already know that additional COVID-related spending so far costs the budget an extra $1.6 billion this year alone. We expect that government payments will be around $30 billion higher over the forward estimates than was forecast pre-election, because of inflation and wage expectations and how they flow through.

              And we know that vital government programs, which are already growing faster than the economy, have upside risks on spending growth. This includes health spending, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, providing decent aged care after years of neglect, and fairer pay for aged-care workers—which the Fair Work Commission is currently considering. Then there are the hidden cost blowouts that we are beginning to discover—like the Modernising Business Registers project, which was not properly resourced and, as the Assistant Treasurer told us, could be $1 billion over budget.

              Finally, we know that the debt burden left to us—the highest level as a share of the economy since the aftermath of the Second World War, with deficits stretching beyond the decade—is growing heavier because of the impact of higher interest rates on repayments. This isn't just COVID debt that we are repaying—our predecessors had more than doubled gross debt before the pandemic hit. And we know that the interest payments on government debt will be the fastest-growing area of government spending—faster than the NDIS, faster than aged care, faster than hospital funding.

              For these reasons, our government must make the difficult decisions necessary for responsible budget repair so that in the future, when there is another pandemic, or another price surge, or more global pressures, future governments are not left in this situation, with so many problems to solve, but so few resources to solve them with.

              Building our resilience against future shocks means starting to deal with the low-quality spending embedded by the previous government. That starts with the audit of rorts and waste that the Minister for Finance and I, and our departments, have begun, going through the budget line by line, making sure that spending is about building value, not buying votes, because right now, every household has to make tough decisions about what they can afford and what they can't—and it shouldn't be any different for government—and because the budget should be about high-quality investments in the right priorities. The Australian people endorsed our priorities in May and they'll see them budgeted for in October.

              When the defining challenges in our economy are high and rising inflation, falling real wages, and choked supply chains—and when our choices are constrained by the fiscal situation—our economic plan will do three things to lift the speed limit on the economy.

              First, help Australians with the costs of living—by cutting childcare costs for approximately 1.26 million families, and reducing barriers for parents, overwhelmingly women, to work additional hours; and by cutting the cost of medicines on the PBS by up to $12.50 a script.

              Second, grow wages over time—by successfully arguing for a decent pay rise for the lowest paid; by supporting decent wages in the care economy; by training people for higher-wage opportunities; by investing in industries which will deliver more secure, well-paid jobs.

              Third, unclog and untangle our supply chains and deal with the supply side of the inflation challenge by investing in cleaner, cheaper more reliable energy; by addressing skills and labour shortages; and with a national reconstruction fund to make us more self-reliant.

              The growing pressures on the economy and the country don't make our election commitments any less important; they make them far more crucial.

              Because our economic plan is a deliberate and direct response to the challenges and opportunities of this age: responsible cost of living relief with an economic dividend—in a time of higher inflation; investing in the potential of our people—in a time of flatlining productivity, skill shortages and falling real wages; action on climate change—before we run out of time; and focusing on budget repair and quality spending—in a time of substantial fiscal pressures.

              Mr Speaker, Australians are paying a hefty price for a wasted decade. They know their new government didn't make this mess, but we take responsibility for cleaning it up.

              In our first few months in government, the scope and the scale of the challenges left for us to tackle—some parts known, other parts hidden—have been made clear. These challenges are confronting for all Australians, but we are not daunted by them. Because in these first few months, we have also been comforted, encouraged and energised by the sense of cooperation and common purpose that Australians share.

              People know not every good idea can be funded, not every support program can continue indefinitely. But there is a genuine appetite to address our challenges, a broad acceptance of the hard things that we have to do now, to pay off in the future. Australians know that we'll only rise to this occasion if we work together.

              That's what the jobs and skills summit in September will be all about. It's what the Albanese Labor government will be all about.

              Yes, we are in a challenging and changing world. The economic picture I've set out today represents a convergence of challenges, the kind of which comes around once in a generation. But this once-in-a-generation challenge represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our country as well—the opportunity to build a better future.

              That's why our agenda is a multi-year effort for a multi-generation benefit, for a future that restores a link between hard work and decent wages; a future that recognises uniquely Australian potential and rewards it with uniquely Australian prosperity; a future that revives our ambition on climate change and repairs our diminished standing in the world; a future where we make more things for ourselves, create more wealth for ourselves, and control our own destiny.

              We have it within us to stare down these threats, to steer our way through this difficult period and seize the opportunities of this new age—with an economy and a budget as resilient as the Australian people themselves and with optimism and confidence that our best days lie beyond.

              I thank the House.

              12:48 pm

              Photo of Paul FletcherPaul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | | Hansard source

              Mr Speaker, I seek your guidance in relation to the content of ministerial statements. The standing orders are really quite specific that ministerial statements are supposed to be specific about government policy. Former Speaker Smith had this to say: 'The purpose of a ministerial statement is to announce government policy or matters for which the minister concerned is responsible. There is no flexibility, tolerance or capacity to talk about anything other than that. It is a ministerial statement; it is not a political statement.'

              The opposition seeks to know whether, under your regime as Speaker, that policy will be maintained. The standing orders are very clear and it's unfortunate some of the things that have been said. We've listened respectfully. We haven't sought to take a point of order during the course of the ministerial statement, but I do seek your guidance, Mr Speaker, either now or as soon as possible. There is a well-accepted set of rules as to what can be said in a ministerial statement. As former Speaker Smith said: 'It is not a political statement.'

              12:49 pm

              Photo of Mr Tony BurkeMr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | | Hansard source

              First of all to the point of order: I thank the Manager of Opposition Business for observing the same protocol that I did in raising what you're saying is a similar issue—waiting until the end of the statement before the issue was raised. I do respect that.

              When the issue was raised in the previous term, it was after the now shadow Treasurer had given a ministerial statement. Whichever rules you bring down we'll all follow, Mr Speaker, but I do submit there was a big distinction. Very simply, that ministerial statement by the now shadow Treasurer specifically referred to the Labor Party; it specifically referred to announced Labor Party policies; it contained a characterisation of his view of divisions within the Labor Party. That's always outside of ministerial statements.

              What was in the ministerial statement that we just heard was the economic context that the government is now in. I wasn't here for the very start, but if there was anything in that statement that, for example, referred to policies or comments that had been made by the now opposition, that engaged in that sort of political dialogue, then that should not be in a ministerial statement. But if we create a situation where you can't talk about the context of the policies you're announcing, I think we'd actually be retreating a long way from what this principle has always been.

              Photo of Milton DickMilton Dick (Speaker) Share this | | Hansard source

              I thank the Leader of the House and I thank the Manager of Opposition Business for raising this issue. I have read both of the statements made by the now shadow minister on 29 October 2020, and I have listened to almost everything the Treasurer said. I do want to address this issue so that the House can move forward, because we will be having further ministerial statements.

              I echo what the then Manager of Opposition Business said on that date, 29 October, when he advised the House that ministerial statements do occur through leave—and this is for the benefit of new members as well—and when that leave is granted then leave is also automatically granted to the opposition—in this case the shadow Treasurer, the Leader of the Opposition or the relevant shadow minister. The convention is that copies are provided in advance, and I understand the Treasurer did that in compliance with that arrangement.

              But the purpose of ministerial statements is to announce government policies or matters for which the minister concerned is responsible. I want to make this clear: there is no flexibility, tolerance or capacity to talk about anything other than that. So think of it like this: think forwards, not backwards. When you are announcing a ministerial statement, you talk about the policies that you are announcing because it is a courtesy the House has given to the relevant minister—and the shadow minister as well.

              I want to point this out to the Treasurer and to all future ministerial statements. While I agree with the Manager of Opposition Business there were some political undertones in the Treasurer's speech, these were given for context purposes. As this is the first ministerial statement to the House, I listened carefully. In making a decision now, I want to be crystal clear: ministerial statements are not to be political statements, and this is outlined very clearly and very concisely in the Practice. I would refer new members to pages 501 and 502. I hope that clarifies the matter moving forward.

              I thank the Manager of Opposition Business, and I now call the member for Hume.

              12:53 pm

              Photo of Angus TaylorAngus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | | Hansard source

              Thank you, Mr Speaker. When UK Prime Minister Harold McMillan was asked about the greatest challenge for a leader, he replied, 'Events, dear boy, events'. The world is facing substantial economic and geopolitical events and challenges. For the best part of three years global events have thrown curveballs and continual challenges at governments, but for this government to suggest that it didn't know any of these challenges were there before the election is false. Russia's invasion of Ukraine happened well before the election. Supply chain issues relating to China's COVID response had been impacting the economy long before the election. The same goes for the impact on the economy more broadly from the pandemic.

              No government can control all of the circumstances and the context that it faces. We accept that. But all governments can be proactive in their responses. Government is all about tough decisions in tough circumstances. In the budget earlier this year, we put in place measures to support Australians by delivering cost-of-living payments, cheaper fuel and cheaper medicines. We are pleased the new government has acknowledged the gravity of the global circumstances facing Australia. We're not suggesting that Labor can change those global circumstances—of course they can't—but they can put the national interest first, ahead of pet projects, ahead of ideological fixations and ahead of vested interests.

              The Treasurer has said that the point of today's statement was to paint a picture of the economy. Well, the economy is not an abstract painting. It's people's lives. On this side, we know what that looks like: small business owners working 18-hour days; families counting each cent as they fill up their fuel tanks; young Australians trying to build for their first home and students working nights to build a better life for themselves and their families. The economy isn't some great mystery to us. It's the outcome of millions of Australians going about their lives, working hard and trying to fulfil their aspirations. Australians know it's tough right now. They don't need a painting from the Treasurer to tell them that. They feel it every day at the coffee shop, at the fuel bowser, at the checkout at the grocery store, when they renovate their homes and when, indeed, they build a new home. The statement from the Treasurer provided nothing to address this.

              Today's statement from the Treasurer is a stark contrast to our record in government. It's a shame that in the first ministerial statement of the new parliament the Treasurer has come in here and delivered a speech which was heavy on politics, heavy on excuses and short on a plan. This is completely out of line with the conventions of ministerial statements.

              When we were in government, we balanced the budget for the first time since the 2000s. We were on track to a surplus. But as I said, we faced curveballs, as governments do. We had fires and droughts and, of course, we had the pandemic, which we understand only too well. We had to take action and we did, even if it meant putting the budget repair on hold. That wasn't an easy decision for Liberals and Nationals, but it was necessary. Our fiscal response was temporary, it was targeted, and it saw Australia through one of the most challenging periods since World War II in a world-leading way. We came out of the pandemic with lower unemployment, strong GDP growth, low interest rates and our AAA credit rating intact. We had an unemployment rate of 3.9 per cent. We all remember that number! The economy was 3.4 per cent bigger than before the pandemic began. That's extraordinary. The cash rate was 0.35 per cent. We remember that one, too! We started the work on budget repair without increasing taxes. We saw in the last budget a record of over $100 billion to improve the budget bottom line. In the most recent financial statement, at the end of May, the budget deficit had more than halved compared with what was forecast in the budget. We delivered cost-of-living relief in our last budget that the Treasury confirmed to Senate estimates was responsible and measured and did not add to inflationary pressures.

              The statement today from the Treasurer failed to acknowledge that, even before the pandemic and before global pressures on inflation, the coalition took action to reduce pressures on cost of living. We provided tax cuts for hardworking families. We didn't need a cost-of-living crisis to do that. We reduced the small business tax rate. We balanced the budget before the pandemic, and we didn't need a cost-of-living crisis to do that. We did these things because they were good policy, good for Australians and good for the economy. Despite the gloom and doom the Treasurer's painting, he has been right to point out in his statement that the underlying fundamentals of the economy are strong. These are proud achievements of the former government—no thanks to Labor. Labor opposed bigger tax cuts to families. They opposed the small-business tax cuts. They fought tooth and nail against restraint in spending, and they wanted to spend more throughout the pandemic. The statement failed to recognise any of that.

              The Prime Minister has clocked up enough air miles in the last three months to circumnavigate the globe, but he hasn't delivered a plan to tackle inflation. Labor is yet to deliver a plan to address immediate cost-of-living pressures. Already since the election we've seen division within the government on this. We've seen the employment minister at odds with the Treasurer on the impact of real wage increases. We've seen the Treasurer and the finance minister profess the need for spending restraint. But the reality is that they're proposing to spend more.

              Labor's criticism about debt levels in today's statement would have more credibility if they weren't proposing to add to that debt. Today's statement fails to acknowledge that the Labor Party went to the last election proposing bigger deficits. That is the reality. This was confirmed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office, which showed that Labor's election platform would make the budget bottom line worse off. By contrast, the PBO confirmed that the coalition was the only party that went to the election with a pathway to improve the budget bottom line. Labor obstructed almost all efforts of budget repair over the last nine years. Over the last two years, their COVID response policies would have resulted in an additional $81 billion of spending. We know that the Labor Party platform, their wish list for government, will require more than $300 billion in new spending.

              In seeking to cast blame today, the Treasurer held out three tests for himself: what happens to power prices, what happens with apprentices and what happens with real wages? We will hold him to account on these tests. Right now, though, the Treasurer sounds like a commentator, not a Treasurer—like a forecaster, not a leader. He is painting pictures, and whether they're finger paintings, water colours or oil paintings, that's not what Australians need; they need a plan. And the longer we go without one, the higher the price Australians will pay.

              Government Member:

              A government member interjecting

              Photo of Angus TaylorAngus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | | Hansard source

              I take the interjection. Let me help out here. In the short term, we do need better access to workers and supplies. This issue is exercising small businesses, and large, more than anything. We all hear this; we're talking to them all the time. And we know that if they can increase their output, if they can increase their supply, it will take pressure off prices. That's how markets work. That's why we've proposed a very specific measure to provide pensioners with more incentive to get back into the workforce, to work extra hours, through doubling the pensioner work bonus—good for pensioners, good for businesses and good for containing inflation. Let's get on with it.

              Beyond this, we need good budget management, not higher taxes. The single greatest tool a government has in order to ease inflation and interest rates is to manage its budget. The IMF has told us this, saying that taming inflation should be the first priority for policymakers. And Chris Richardson recently said—he put it very simply, in fact—that if you throw money at the economy, you just get extra inflation. In today's statement, Labor has failed to outline a plan to address the cost of living. We do not know what they propose. We do know what they proposed in the election: $18.9 billion in new and additional spending measures, $45 billion in new debt for off-budget funds. That's their sneaky spending, the $45 billion—the off-budget stuff. Labor could rein in that spending now. They would have immediate support.

              The Reserve Bank plays a crucial role in managing inflation, and we need a strong, independent, credible, capable Reserve Bank. But it's not enough to leave the response to rising cost-of-living pressures to the Reserve Bank. The less work Labor does on managing the budget the more the Reserve Bank will have to raise interest rates. Without a Labor plan for better budget outcomes, Australians will pay more on their mortgages.

              Finally, productivity takes pressure off prices. In all the build-up to this statement, this week we've seen what Labor's priorities are on productivity. Labor has introduced regulation to abolish the ABCC and, in the process, raised the cost of construction in this country—the cost of building homes, the cost of building schools, the cost of building hospitals and the cost of building roads. We know from independent economic analysis that this will be a $47.5 billion hit to our economy.

              At the same time, Labor is removing transparency and accountability from our super system and from initiatives that support better fund management and ensure that Australian's retirement savings are productively invested. These are actions the government is taking that are worsening productivity at a time when they should be searching for solutions to improve it. The solutions are there if you're prepared to look for them.

              No-one blames the government for the global circumstances challenging Australia's economy, but we can and will hold them to account for how they respond to it. Today's statement neglected to acknowledge one simple fact: the government controls what happens from here. The government can make choices to address these pressures, and the risk for Australia is that Labor makes a bad situation worse. Australia needs a plan, not a picture. At the moment, the only plan Labor has is to make Australians poorer.