Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just look at those opposite over there, and clearly they weren't paying attention in year 7 economics. There's a book that perhaps they should have a look at called Economics for Today. It's a year 7 textbook. It might help them understand a little principle in economics called supply and demand. When you work on reducing unemployment and workers become harder to come by, it actually means employers will pay them more.

Do we need to have a little talk about inflation as well? When last year we were in the midst of a global pandemic, when businesses were closing down and shutting their doors and all the states were locking up their borders, that made it harder for people to maintain their jobs. So what the Morrison government did was ensure that people could still put their kids in child care by making it free. When we look at inflation figures and all of a sudden lots of costs that families normally endure no longer have a cost, that means there's a thing called lower inflation. We get lower inflation. When we look at what that means to wages in the year where we get higher inflation, that means it kind of looks like real wages are going down, but in effect they're not; it's just being covered by the return to what we could call a more normal rate of inflation—around three or 3½ per cent—rather than zero, as was experienced during the 2020 pandemic pretty much across the globe.

Let's talk a little bit more about job creation. I know those opposite get their wages primarily from the unions and they're probably on a scale indexed every year, so they go up more on confidence rather than capability, but let's never let that get in the way of a promotion within the union movement. For those of us that live in the real world—the 80 per cent of people who are employed by small and medium-sized businesses—wages are determined by how successful the business they own or work in is. How tough it is for employers to get staff, because if it's harder to get a staff member, you normally need to offer more money or an inducement to get them to come and work in your business. Again, for all of those who didn't pay attention: supply and demand. When the demand for workers is greater and the supply is shorter, wages will go up.

Last night, in the budget, we saw what the Morrison government is doing to ensure that the Australian economy keeps powering on. We are best placed in the world with our recovery. We have a health situation where the virus has been suppressed—not the McGowan strategy of completely extinguishing it but the suppression strategy we undertook at the beginning, which has been successful—and businesses are thriving and we're starting to see life, in a lot of ways, go back to pre-COVID conditions. We want to make sure that that economic growth continues. We want to make sure that businesses are able to continue expanding and employing more people.

How are we going to do that? We're going to ensure that things like the instant asset write-off continue into the future so that we continue to see the capital markets, so that we see people investing in machinery for their businesses or tradies buying a new ute. We're making child care more targeted when we talk to low- and middle-income families, so we're going to make it easier and more affordable for people to take on additional days of work. It's the Morrison government that's focused on seeing businesses grow, it's the Morrison government that's committed to ensuring Australia's economy comes back and it's the Morrison government that is putting Australia and its workers first.

We have seen that when over 99 per cent of businesses that employ over 11 million workers write off their eligible asset, those businesses that traditionally suffer during times of downturn have in fact thrived. If you go out to WJ Matthews in Moree, a fair few headers and tractors have been bought, but that normally wouldn't have happened. That's a significant number of jobs for a country town. Guess what? It's pretty tough to get a mechanic out there. Supply and demand, guys; that's how you keep the wages growing.