Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to make a contribution in this debate on cost of living and the legislated tax cuts. I'll start from that position. These are legislated tax cuts. These are tax cuts that are in place at the moment. People are expecting them to be delivered no matter who's in power. People are expecting to keep more of their own hard-earned money no matter who is in power, and people are expecting—they're hoping—for a government that actually knows how to manage the economy and how to tackle the inflationary crisis, not one that keeps blaming solely the war in Ukraine for something that is much deeper and much more significant and embedded in the Australian economy than that.

We are currently seeing an annualised CPI of around 7.8 per cent. In my home state in the last quarter of last year, that reflected a CPI rate of 3.6 per cent in one quarter. Annualised, it's very easy to see that that's not 7.8 per cent; it's well in excess of 14 per cent. So we are in a situation where the average families out there, average mums and dads, are facing an extraordinary level of pressure on the family budget in terms of increasing petrol prices, with a 2.2 per cent rise in the December quarter, and increasing electricity prices, with an 8.6 per cent rise in the December quarter and forecast further increases this year. Health services are also going up, at 4.2 per cent per annum.

That is just the start of the pressure Australian families and Australian households are facing. That's just the start, because we've also seen the fastest cash rate rise in history. We've seen cash rates and mortgage interest rates rise at a faster rate under this government than we've ever seen before.

The track record on interest rates from the respective parties of government is pretty clear. I went through this last night, and I'll just go back to some of the key points again. Since the RBA has been publishing data, since 1990—so that's a 32-year period; that's a decent sample size, I think you'd all agree—we've seen a data set that shows us that the Labor Party has delivered the highest interest rate in that period, of 17.5 per cent compared with the coalition's highest rate of 7½ per cent. We've seen the coalition deliver average cash rates—this is not mortgage rates; this is cash rates, so add two or three per cent for your mortgage—of 3.7 per cent, whereas under Labor the average rate has been 6.2. That's 6.2 versus 3.7 over a 32-year period.

This is not just some statistical anomaly. This is not just some blip. This is the comparison of two parties of government. This is the coalition, the Liberal Party, which knows how to handle money, which knows how to manage the economy, which knows how to balance the needs of growth with the needs of what society demands of government, compared with the Labor Party, who simply does not. They're demonstrating that again now. The things they cite in this place as examples of how they're providing relief to households are quite frankly very small, help a very limited number of households and simply do not go to what people need.

People need to see a government with a plan to actually tackle the inflationary crisis that we're currently under. These are not sustainable levels of inflation, and they are actually undermining the wages of Australians. Real wage growth is plummeting. Have you noticed that those opposite never talk about real wage growth anymore? It's because they know, with inflation where it is today, we won't see real wage rises for many, many years.