Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week, the Albanese government held its much-anticipated economic roundtable, which was hyped up to be this enormously grand event that would deliver huge ideas about how to fix Australia's productivity crisis. But after weeks of kites being flown by the unions and the Prime Minister hosing down the Treasurer's ideas, we finally know the outcomes. Or do we? Here's the problem: what did Australians get for their taxpayer dollars? Just like the Jobs and Skills Summit three years prior to that, the roundtable was another Labor letdown. Only this time it was held behind closed doors, so we don't actually know what was discussed in the room. What we do know is that there were no tangible measures that came out of the roundtable. There was no plan for business confidence. There was no plan to reduce red tape. There was no strategy to get power prices down. There was not a single measure to give relief to small businesses or to households that have been struggling with the last three years under Labor's economic mismanagement.

While Labor and the Treasurer were locked up inside this roundtable, Australian families and small businesses continued to do it tough. Let me give you some facts. Fact 1: under Labor, productivity has gone backwards. It's gone backwards by about five per cent in the last three years of the Albanese government. Fact 2: standards of living have gone backwards. They've collapsed by more than six per cent under Labor. That's why if you're feeling poorer, you in fact are poorer. Your standard of living has collapsed. Fact 3: the Reserve Bank has said that living standards will continue to fall under this government unless something is done to address sluggish productivity.

The roundtable, therefore, had a really important job. Australians were promised a productivity turbocharge. What did we get? We got a flat battery. In fact, the only tangible outcome from this summit was the adoption of—surprise!—a coalition policy to freeze the National Construction Code. That's right—after three days of talking and weeks of floating ideas and spin being spun to the media, Labor's big idea was to copy a coalition policy that we took to the last election—a policy that they previously opposed, I might add. Now, don't get me wrong, that freeze is welcome after their first term saw them deliver 400 additional new laws that cost $5 billion. It added $5 billion to the cost of construction. There were 1,500 new regulations in the Treasury and infrastructure portfolios alone, and changes to the National Construction Code in 2022 made it harder and more expensive to build new homes. That deepened the housing affordability crisis in Australia.

So it's nice to see that Labor has had a change of heart, but, unfortunately, a one-year delay is not a comprehensive freeze. More needs to be done, particularly in housing. This government has overseen the biggest growth in population in Australia since the 1950s, but it's also presided over a housing construction collapse. Over nine years under the coalition government, we averaged 200,000 new homes built every single year. Under Labor, there have been 170,000. But instead of supporting Australians into homes, Labor continues to instead support superannuation funds acting as corporate landlords. On this side of politics, we fundamentally believe that individual Australians and Australian families should own their own homes. We don't think big corporates should own your homes for you. We certainly don't think big super funds should do so.

That leads me to one of the other outcomes of the productivity round table; that is, that Labor will now review the superannuation fund performance test to—wait for it—remove obstacles or impediments to super investing in housing and other areas where there is clearly a national need. Let's be very, very clear about this: there is nothing stopping superannuation funds investing in any asset but it has to financially stack up, otherwise it robs you, the superannuation fund member, of the best financial outcome you can get. We certainly don't want the performance test to become a superannuation fund vehicle for Labor's political agenda. But you can trust Labor to emerge from a round table with changes to unlock the performance test as the key to unlocking economic growth; heaven help us! Could you not come up with something better than that to really move the dial on productivity, lower energy prices, genuine tax reform, more flexible industrial relations and a step change in our educational standards? That's all Labor came up with—a change to the superannuation performance test. It looks like the Treasurer got so carried away sitting in the Prime Minister's chair at the cabinet table that he forgot about the real purpose of this meeting.

Australians deserve a government that understands that productivity isn't just an opportunistic slogan. Productivity might not sound like a sexy topic but it is the secret weapon to better living standards in Australia. To improve our living standards, we need to see real action from this government, not just talk.