Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week Australian mortgage holders and small business owners were slugged with the 13th interest rate rise since this government came into power—an unlucky number for what increasingly feels like an unlucky country. Once upon a time, we considered ourselves the lucky country, the land of the fair go, where, if you worked hard, you got ahead. Now, we're the country of the most rampant inflation problem of any major advanced economy. Since May 2022, gas prices are up 42 per cent, electricity is up 38 per cent, milk is up 24 per cent and eggs are up a whopping 37 per cent. These are the basic household goods that our people pay for.

In my electorate of Cowper, the average household income is certainly on the low side of the national scale. They're small business owners, farmers, retail workers and modest retirees. Every day I hear about the choices they're being forced to make to keep their heads above water—choosing between mortgages and medicine or electricity bills and groceries. I hear from businesses who can no longer afford their input costs but can't put their prices up because their customers can't afford to pay for it. It's no wonder the insolvency rate reached its highest level in 35 years. And how did we get here? It's because this government is more focused on ideology than sound fiscal management. There's a Treasurer more concerned with headlines than households. And it's those that can least afford it that ultimately pay the price.

For the next decade, the federal budget is a sea of red because Labor keep spending with reckless abandon on their own pet projects. In fact, they've added $50 billion of discretionary spending this year alone. Public spending is currently growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy. The government sector is getting fat while the taxpaying private sector and small businesses are starving. This government's answer to everything is more debt. Take our housing affordability problem. Labor's answer is a five per cent deposit scheme a scheme that has driven up prices and encouraged our would-be first home buyers to take on the maximum amount of personal debt to acquire one of the few remaining homes over the past disastrous four years of rampant, irresponsible immigration by Labor. The repayments on a 95 per cent loan over 30 years are simply criminal.

I say this: we are now paying $3 million an hour, $67 million a day and $24 billion a year in interest. That is your money. That is not the government's money. Don't be fooled by a tricky Treasurer deflecting responsibility. This is his mess, and we have to live with it. (Time expired)