Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When Australians put their trust in the Albanese Labor government they backed a vision for a stronger, fairer economy, one that delivers for working people, businesses and communities alike. In challenging global times, we've delivered on our commitment to responsible economic management, ensuring that prosperity is shared while protecting the integrity of our national finances.

The Albanese government did not inherit easy economic times. In 2022 this government inherited four big economic challenges. First, we inherited high Liberal inflation, running at more than six per cent. Second, that Liberal inflation led to successive interest rate rises, which continued in the subsequent years. Third, the Liberals left us a trillion dollars worth of national debt. Fourth, they left a period of 10 years with virtually zero real wages growth. These four factors were the legacy of a Liberal government that pursued economic policies that were wrong for Australia.

As the Albanese government came to confront these challenges in 2022, we found that some of them were common around the world. Many nations were dealing with high inflation; many nations were dealing with rising interest rates. As different countries around the world battled to bring that inflation down, Australia's performance stood out. Many countries did get their inflation down over the last 2½ years, but they did so through a recession. Japan had a recession, the United Kingdom had a recession, New Zealand had a recession, Finland had a recession and Germany fell into recession. Australia is one of the few countries in this economic cycle—in fact, in modern economic cycles—that have reduced inflation by so much without falling into recession. It's the soft landing, the challenging Goldilocks outcome, that has caused Australia to reduce inflation while maintaining low unemployment—lower unemployment, indeed, over the term of this government than over the term of any recent government. It would be a remarkable fact in any circumstances but is made more remarkable by the fact that we had to do it at the same time as a steep reduction in inflation.

We also delivered two budget surpluses, the first budget surpluses in 15 years. So this is a record of falling inflation, maintaining employment, and fiscal discipline—the hallmarks of good economic management, delivered by the Albanese government.

This brings us to the choice that Australians will face at the next election. Australians will face a choice between this Albanese government, which has delivered that record, and the opposition, which has been high on criticism but low on real solutions. Australians still face many challenges—housing, cost of living, energy—but Peter Dutton and the Liberals present no solutions to any of these challenges. They have a housing policy that does not build a single home. They have a cost-of-living policy that does not deliver a single dollar of relief to families. They have an energy policy that will not create a megawatt of power in the next 20 years. This is an opposition that is always there to criticise but, when it comes to delivering solutions to the problems that Australians face, has no answers.

As Australians head towards the election and reflect on the choices available to them, they will see that there are no solutions to the challenges they face in their daily lives coming from the opposition. This won't be surprising to Australians, because, over my lifetime, the Liberals have always got the big economic calls wrong. They opposed the floating of the dollar in the eighties. They opposed superannuation in the nineties, they voted against the NBN in the 2000s, they dared the car industry to leave in the 2010s and they opposed the energy transition in the 2020s. That's 40 years of wrong economic calls which have left our nation poorer, nearly half a century of economic errors. The truth is, Speaker, that the Liberals always get the big economic calls wrong, while this Albanese Labor government has delivered on lower inflation, strong employment and budget discipline.

House adjourned at 20:00