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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

I move to take note particularly of those around the inflation figures that were announced today. It is quite extraordinary how far inflation has ticked up considering that, just a few months ago, Jim Chalmers was telling us all that the inflation genie was back in the bottle, that he had tamed the dragon, that we didn't need to worry anymore, that we could expect decreases in the prices of houses, that we'd see interest rates come down, that everything was fine and that it was all due to his exceptional economic management. Well, how quickly the story has changed!

You would recall, Deputy President, that at the beginning of this Labor government, when inflation was high, Jim Chalmers, the Treasurer, said that it was always somebody else's fault. First of all, he blamed the coalition. Then he said it was Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and that was why they had to push up gas prices. Then he said that it was Hamas's fault and that the troubles that were going on in the Middle East were causing the rise in energy prices and pushing up inflation around the world. Then he said: 'Well, now that President Trump has been elected, that's geopolitical instability and that's causing some problems with inflation. That's just something we have to deal with.' And then he came back to the coalition and said it was our fault all over again.

At no point in time has the Treasurer even once taken responsibility for the persistent inflation in this country, even though our inflation was higher and lasted longer than in so many other advanced economies, who managed to tame their inflation through fiscal responsibility. They saw the government spending wind back in response to high inflation around the world. They said: 'No, we'll do our bit. We'll do some of the heavy lifting. We won't turn it all over to monetary policy.' But that's not what this government did. In fact, they said: 'This is really Michele Bullock's responsibility. We'll just turn it over to her.' So the poor RBA had to pull on the only lever they had—they only have one lever, and that's monetary policy—and they pulled it 12 times. That's why we saw interest rates go up 12 times in the last parliament—12 times! It has since come back down three times, but now it has stalled again.

There are so many Australians out there—do you remember the days, Deputy President Brockman, when Australians really didn't give two hoots what the inflation data was doing? They really didn't even look too hard at interest rates. But now you've got families that are hanging out watching economic data roll in, wondering how it's going to affect them. And you can understand why, because their living standards have gone backwards under this government. Why have they gone backwards? Because inflation has been too high for too long. It has eaten away at their wages. It means that they can buy less with the money that they have. Even if their wages have gone up, they haven't gone up enough to keep up with the rising cost of living. And it's that cost of living that has caused so much damage in just the last three years alone—that persistent rising cost of living. It's a problem which, according to Jim Chalmers, has apparently been solved.

What is one of the causes of this persistent inflation? It's not just government spending although, let's face it, that is important—even Michele Bullock has pointed that out. It is the rising cost of energy—those increasing energy bills, those energy bills that you all know have gone up by 40 per cent in the last three years. And why have they gone up 40 per cent? Because of this government's ideological obsession with reaching its renewable energy targets and reducing emissions well beyond any comparable country by 2030, and, indeed, 2035 as well. That ideological obsession has seen our energy prices rise, not lower.

Only the coalition has proposed an alternative, which is to reduce emissions while delivering affordable and reliable energy, shoring up the grid—a technology neutral approach that will not see a one-eyed single technology of renewable energy delivering higher energy prices, which of course is taking us all backwards. That renewable energy obsession is what has seen companies go out of business, like Tomago, like Incitec Pivot, like Qenos plastics, like Oceania Glass in my home state of Victoria. These companies, these manufacturing businesses, are going out of business because of this government's approach to managing the economy, to managing the energy grid and to managing inflation.

We want to see the pie grow. Economic management is not something that happens by accident; it happens by design. But this government has done the exact opposite, and it is Australians who are paying the price.