Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always a great privilege to rise in this place. One of the things about this place is, of course, tradition and the honour that we give to the democracy of Australia. But there are so many trends out there that defy those niceties of the old days. Some of them are these online trends, like the one that happened recently, the 2016 flashback. I couldn't help but notice that the Treasurer didn't participate in that social media trend, which got me to wondering why that would be. He seems like a hip kind of guy. I reckon the reason he doesn't want to think about 2016 isn't that it was Trump's first election and isn't that it was the year of Brexit. It is because in that year of 2016 the cash rate set by the RBA in its February meeting 10 years ago was—you guessed it—two per cent. I don't think that's something that the Treasurer enjoys getting a flashback to. And, in 2016, interest rates continued to drop. By the end of that year, the Reserve Bank rate was just 1.5 per cent. And here's the broader point: interest rates are always lower under a coalition government because we believe in fiscal discipline and this new generation of Labor governments simply do not. Our view on this side of the House is simple: live within our means, restore some budget rules and get inflation down so that rates can come down and families can breathe again.

Just yesterday, I received an email from my constituent Leigh from Pacific Pines, and I want the House to hear what Labor's cost-of-living crisis looks like in plain English and lived experience. Leigh wrote to me: 'If there is an interest rate hike today, it will kill me. My stress levels are already out of control. I cannot remember the last time I had a holiday, and I just worked on my days off on the weekend to try and earn extra money.' Leigh's message to government was direct but very fair: 'It is not my fault the government spending is out of control.' That's a hard email to receive because you can hear the stress in between the lines of writing, a person who's doing everything right. I know he's got a well-paying job, working extra shifts, sacrificing time with family, trying to stay afloat and yet still worried about the next movement of interest rates and how much further that will push him over the edge. The more confronting thing about his email was the screenshot attached from his bank with the default message. And of course, just an hour after I spoke to him on the phone, Leigh and every Australian with a mortgage were delivered a crushing blow when the Reserve Bank raised interest rates for the 13th time under this Labor government.

The rate rise was no accident. It's a direct consequence of Labor's addiction to spending, which has kept inflation higher for longer and left the RBA with no choice but to keep tightening. And so, while the Treasurer preens at the dispatch box using his two- and three-word groupings, families on the Gold Coast and across Australia are doing some really difficult sums at the kitchen table. The average mortgage is up by around $1,800 a month since Labor took office in 2022. That's about $22,000 a year. Electricity prices have surged, and we've all seen what happens when the rebates run out. The false economy ends, and the prices hit the households.

For many families this isn't a cost-of-living crisis anymore; it's simply a cost-of-survival crisis. In the current financial year alone, Labor has added an additional $50 billion of new and discretionary spending decisions—almost the value of the entire national defence budget. But being loose with the national budget means that it's getting tighter for Australian households. Last week we saw the CPI data go up to 3.8 per cent. That means milk, bread, back-to-school basics, insurance—all those costs of living—are all higher under this Labor government, and that is why Australians feel poorer every payday under Labor.