As Australians go to work today on this Monday, hopefully having had a good weekend—taking kids to sport—many families are wondering how they are going to get from Monday to their next paycheque on Thursday. They've had a good weekend with the kids—they might have taken them to a movie or done some fun things—but there's now always more week at the end of the money. Australians are doing it tougher than I have ever seen before. I was an apprentice carpenter when Australia was last in recession—this was in the 1980s; Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, you're old enough to remember this. I would have been in my late teens, experiencing the hardships that so many people have not experienced today. In fact, if you are under 50 you have not lived through a recession in Australia.

Chris Uhlmann wrote a very good piece in the Australian yesterday, and I would encourage all my colleagues on all sides of the political fence, and anybody who may be listening to this—particularly those tradesmen who may be working on Australian building sites and listening to parliament, as I often used to do; believe it or not, there are many—to read it. Chris Uhlmann wrote about the state of Australia and compared us to Argentina—about how you could not have manufactured if you had tried such a decline in Australian living standards as this government has overseen. We have seen the sharpest decline in living standards of all the OECD countries.

Australian men and women are working harder now than ever before. There was a report out last week that showed a significant increase in Australians who are now having to work two or three jobs just to pay their bills. We've seen 15 interest rate rises under this government, and we are tipped, economists say, in this cycle to see another four interest rate rises. Rents are on their way up—in fact, we've seen a trifecta of housing failure from this government: rents are up, prices are down and confidence is smashed. This morning I was talking to one of my colleagues from the Gold Coast, who was telling me that one of the agencies in his electorate on the Gold Coast has not sold a single property in the month of September. I was talking to a real estate agent in my electorate recently, and she was telling me that their agency had not sold a property since the budget was handed down.

But we have a plan to fix the economy and to protect our way of life. The coalition is absolutely committed to overturning the disastrous path that this government has put us on. We will ensure that we get Australia back to where it was, with clean, affordable energy. We will do that. We will cut the bureaucratic red tape that this government has lumped on, one piece of legislation at a time, and we will fix our economy by restoring confidence in our housing sector that this government has continued to smash time and time and time again. (Time expired)

It could be, maybe, as we move into September, nearing the end of footy season and looking forward to cricket season, why it's a cricket analogy that I came up with when I read the title of this motion. I feel like the poor member for Fisher has had a ball handed to him by the member for Bowman that's not easy to bowl—as much as when I read the title of this motion, I thought, 'This is going to be, in cricket terms, a bit of a lollipop.' There's going to be a chance to hit this one over the fence.

Unfortunately, when I read the detail of the motion, it was more reminiscent of that famous John Howard bowl, in Pakistan, when he bowled to the diggers and it bounced 10 times in front of him and then slowly dribbled off the pitch. I think that the member for Fisher has been handed a ball where I'd be asking for another ball, because, when you read this motion, it is really almost laughable.

It's almost as if they're having a bit of a lend to come up with this one: delivering lower taxes, lower power prices and more housing! I am just incredulous that that they could come into this place and try and talk about their record on lower taxes. They were led by an opposition leader that was going to the last election with higher taxes, mind you, and that was pushing a policy to go to nuclear, which is still their policy, by the way; they just haven't talked about the fact that private enterprise aren't going to back it. Are we going to be landed again with that $600 billion bill? They had a leader that presided over a government that built something like 373 public housing dwellings over the nine years that they were in government. So I am a bit incredulous that they could come to the House with this motion.

Another element of this motion is this:

… supports the Opposition's plan to put Australians first by:

(a) managing the budget responsibly;

(b) paying down debt; and

(c) investing in Australia's future …

I'm very much reminded of my own experience in business. I very much love the saying that you can run a country like you run a business. There are two ways that you can run a business. One of them is to invest in your plant and your people, and the other is to strip the profits out and run it into the ground. I think that what we saw from the last 30 years of mainly coalition rule was a failure to invest in our people and a failure to invest in our industrial capacity that have really created this cost-of-living crisis, which has been exacerbated by two overseas wars and a pandemic. That showed that everything works until it doesn't.

Just as the Liberal Party dared the car industry to leave, it is also that they oppose the sorts of interventions that this government is taking in the economy to protect our industrial base, whether it's steel in Whyalla or aluminium in Gladstone and in Tomago, whether it is lead and zinc in Port Pirie or whether it is copper in Mount Isa and Townsville. When you talk about investing in Australia's future, this government's actual record of what it is doing really speaks to the failure of the movers of this motion, and the supporters of this motion, who have left Australia with the economic problems that we have today.

Finally, calling on the government to 'adopt practical policies' that 'back workers and small business'—how about backing a pay rise? They failed to do that in all the years that they were in government, yet this government has backed pay rises so that we have seen the national minimum wage increase by more than $12,000 per year. That is basically a 12 per cent real wage increase for lowest-paid workers. Plus, we're strengthening our superannuation system by actually delivering on the increase to 12 per cent and backing it through Payday Super as well. The idea of those opposite calling on the government to back Australian workers and small business is really, frankly, contemptible.

And so it is here, on the Monday of this final September sitting, that we're faced with a motion which, unfortunately, has hit the pitch in front of the bowler and dribbled slowly off the pitch. I think the member for Bowman owes the member for Fisher a big— (Time expired)

So often during this parliamentary term and the previous one, we have seen Labor members opposite talking about unions, drumming up unions and saying how responsible and how beholden they are to the unions. What we saw over the weekend was a former Labor union luminary in Bill Kelty absolutely bell the cat when it comes to how the economy is faring. For Labor members to even try to justify how the economy is going is beyond the pale.

Bill Kelty talked about the housing crisis. Bill Kelty talked about how real wages are falling. And that is true. Now, Labor member after Labor member can talk on this motion, can speak on other motions and can get up in question time and ask Dorothy Dixers of any minister they like. But out in the real world, people are hurting. Out in the real world, people's wages are falling. And it doesn't matter how many submissions Labor puts to the Fair Work Commission.

Last week we saw just about every single Labor member talking about wage justice for childhood educators. Nobody doubts that those people who are looking after our littlies deserve fair wages; everyone deserves fair wages. But when Labor oversees an economy that is just tanking, then how can they talk about real wages increasing? They are not, and the prices for everything are up, whether it's for energy or whether it's for fuel—and we've seen just over the weekend the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. It is worrying. It is worse now than when the crisis began some months ago. And yet, have we heard any Labor members talking about that?

We see the prices of groceries going up and up. If you think prices at the supermarket are expensive now, just wait until after Labor finishes buying yet another 130 gigalitres out of the Murray-Darling system. Now, not a lot of metropolitan members realise this, but, when you buy water away from our farmers—when you continue this insidious, ridiculous, unnecessary, unjust and unfair buy-out of our farmers—it means that they can grow less food. I don't know why people can't realise this, Just recently we saw this government, which has now over $1 trillion in debt, buy another $430 million worth of water. What does that mean? For those people in the gallery, just out of interest, it means the equivalent of 34,400 Olympic sized swimming pools taken away from our farmers, who grow the fruit, the vegetables and all the things that end up on supermarket shelves. When we can't have Australian made food on supermarket shelves, what do we do? We have to import it from overseas, and we don't know what they grow it with. We don't know what conditions they have. We don't know what sustainability they have in their growing processes. It's just nuts.

Then, when we get a good motion put forward by the member for Bowman to talk about the economic plan—fixing the economy, protecting our way of life—we get Labor members coming in and deriding it. Well, they could do better to actually get a copy of the coalition's plan, read it with an open mind and see where we can be better in a bipartisan way. Goodness knows, at the moment we are not on a treadmill but, absolutely, on an elevator crashing down when it comes to every economic parameter and every economic indicator.

Mr Keelty absolutely summed it up, and Labor members would do well to heed his words. When you get a union leader such as him, a former union leader, talking about how the economy is going so badly and then you get Labor members—nobody is so blind as somebody who will not see. At the moment, we've got Labor members with their blinkers on. They just refuse to admit that the economy is going badly. They refuse to admit that families are hurting. They refuse to admit that real wages are falling. They refuse to admit that things are too expensive. And they refuse to admit that the housing minister has got it all wrong when it comes to the housing market and the housing sector, per se. It is a disgrace, and Labor members need to get back into their electorates and start listening, because people are hurting here.

As I rise to speak on this motion, I welcome the fact that the coalition is finally talking about the economy rather than fighting amongst themselves. Unfortunately, what Australians are hearing from those opposite is not a serious economic plan; it's a collection of slogans. Those opposite talk about lower taxes, but, when the government delivered tax cuts for Australian workers, they voted against them. They talk about responsible economic management, but they left behind a trillion dollars of debt, large deficits, high inflation and a decline of real wages.

A trillion dollars of debt after four years of a Labor government.

I heard the member opposite in silence, and I would ask him to treat me with the same respect.

On 1 July, more than 14 million Australians received another tax cut worth up to $268. We are delivering the Working Australians tax offset, worth up to $250 a year, and a $1,000 instant tax deduction to make tax time simpler and put more money back into the pockets of working people. Taken together, these reforms mean that a worker on average earnings can be nearly $3,000 a year better off by 2028. That is real relief for working Australians while making the tax system simpler and fairer for millions nationwide.

But cost-of-living relief cannot stop with the tax system. That is why we are also making it cheaper for Australians to look after their health. We have strengthened Medicare, made medicines cheaper and established Medicare urgent care clinics across the country, including the wonderful urgent care clinic in Deception Bay, a wonderful part of my electorate. These clinics provide bulk-billed urgent treatment without people having to reach for their credit or debit cards, and this government has now made them a permanent part of Medicare. We are investing in public hospitals and have delivered $25 scripts, because Australians should never have to choose between getting the care they need and meeting another household bill.

We are also backing better wages. Since coming to government, we have supported a pay rise for millions of Australia's lowest paid workers. Higher wages matter to the early childhood worker, the cleaner, the retail worker, the hospitality worker and the aged-care worker. They matter to families trying to stay ahead of their mortgage, rent, groceries and bills. We are bringing that same practical approach to housing. Australia's housing challenge did not appear overnight, and there is no single policy that will fix it. What is needed is sustained investment across the housing system. Our tax reforms will help around 75,000 more Australians into homeownership. We're investing in infrastructure to unlock new housing, growing the supply of social and affordable homes, supporting renters and helping first home buyers compete. The objective is simple—more Australians having the security of a place to call home.

Our tax reforms also include more than $3.8 billion in new measures to lower taxes for businesses and start-ups while reducing compliance costs. Small business is the cafe opening before sunrise, the tradie taking on an apprentice and the family business investing locally. Supporting them means supporting Australian jobs.

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of this motion is the attempt by those opposite to lecture this government about budget responsibility. When Labor came to office, we inherited $1 trillion of debt and enormous deficits. Since then, we have found savings in every budget. In this budget alone, we have identified $64 billion in savings. The budget position is nearly $45 billion stronger than it was in the media update and more than a quarter of a trillion dollars better than what we inherited. Debt is lower as a share of the economy and is now forecast to peak at 35.8 per cent of the GDP, 9.1 percentage points below the peak we inherited. This budget delivers lower deficits and less debt every year compared with previous forecasts.

On migration, the government is taking a measured and responsible approach. The answer is not to pretend Australia can simply shut the door without consequences to our hospitals, aged care, construction, regional communities or the skilled workforce that our economy needs. Our approach is to bring migration back to sustainable levels while ensuring Australians still have the skills required to build homes, to care for Australians and to grow the economy.

Australians have been through difficult times: pandemic, global inflation, international—

The time allotted for this debate has expired.