Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

When you govern, it is not what you have done that matters. What matters is the effect of what you've done. Unfortunately for Australian families and businesses, Labor is breaking international economic records for all the wrong reasons. It's breaking records for all the wrong reasons because the effect of what it is doing is damaging the prosperity of our country, damaging the livelihoods of Australian families, and damaging the livelihoods of small businesses and the sacrifices that they have been making across our country.

At the election, which is now just moments away, Australians only have to ask themselves one question: are the living standards that I have enjoyed and that my family, including my grandparents, have enjoyed for decades going to go up or are they going to go down if we have another three years of Labor? The honest answer to that, peeling away all the politics, is the latter. Australian parents and grandparents can no longer guarantee that their children and their grandchildren are going to experience high standards of living—indeed, standards of living that have been the envy of the world. They cannot say to their children and grandchildren that they are guaranteed those high standards of living into the future under Labor.

We know that over the past two years Australians have endured the biggest fall in living standards of any country in the developed world. What a remarkable record that Anthony Albanese and Labor take to the election, due in just moments. But, more than that, the International Monetary Fund has said that in 2025 Australia will continue to experience the highest levels of inflation of any advanced economy in the world bar one. That one country is Slovakia. I'm not even sure where it is on the map, but I'll quickly find out.

So it is shameful that Labor come into the Senate chamber and that Labor go out across the electorates in Australia saying that the country can trust them because of all the things they have done when, in actual fact, in all the things they have done, they have made this nation go backwards: seven quarters of negative GDP per capita; the weakest annual growth since 1991; and one new person coming to this country every 46 seconds. What that means is that those unplanned, unmodelled immigration levels have put huge pressure on Australians looking for properties to buy and huge pressure on Australians, particularly young Australians, looking to rent. This country has been the beneficiary of strong, positive immigration for many decades, but, under this Labor government, unplanned, unmodelled immigration has made life harder for many Australians.

So at this election only one question needs to be on the lips of every Australian voter: will my next three years be better under Labor? The answer to that is it can't be; it just cannot be better under Labor in the next three years because the evidence of the last 2½ years is that this country has gone backwards. The data proves it. Australian families feel it. People are talking about it in the streets. The stories are harrowing, and there is no clear pathway out of this under a Labor government. This is all from the man, Anthony Albanese, who said that things would get better under Labor.