Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

The question we have to ask is: why is the government spending so much time talking about the opposition? They're the government. They've been the government for the last four years, and yet those people listening to question time would have heard repeated references to the opposition, to our leadership, and to our election review, for goodness' sake.

What is the Labor government doing spending time talking about the election review undertaken by the Liberal Party? It's extraordinary. The people in my region, greater Ipswich in South-East Queensland, are the ones going to food banks for the first time in their lives. Even people with jobs are going because they can't afford to pay their mortgages. They can't afford to pay their rent. They can't afford to pay their electricity bills. They can't afford their groceries, let alone provide for their children to engage in sporting activities and cultural activities. That's what the government should be focused on. They shouldn't be focused on the leadership of the opposition or, for goodness' sake, an election review undertaken by the Liberal Party of Australia. It's just absolutely absurd. I think it says everything you need to know.

The second point I'll make is, continually, they refer to the level of debt during the height of a global pandemic. I was proud of how the coalition government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. In my region, there were small businesses on their knees. There were business owners who were having sleepless nights pondering how they were going to keep their employees on. Under Josh Frydenberg, our then treasurer, we introduced JobKeeper and took that pressure off businesses small, medium-sized and large. It lifted that pressure. Do people remember? I remember seeing the photographs of people turning up at Centrelink offices around the country—the queues going around the corner—and the coalition government acted. We acted. Sure, there was an economic consequence in terms of the debt, but that was something we had to face. That was the right thing to do, and we make no apologies for that. That was in the national interest. I hate to think of the consequences there would have been had we not undertaken that action. That was the fit and proper thing to do in those circumstances.

The government needs to spend less time talking about the opposition and more time talking about the Australian people. One of the biggest issues facing the Australian economy at the moment is inflation, and I want to read to you from a book called Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell, on inflation:

Inflation is in effect a hidden tax. The money that people have saved is robbed of part of its purchasing power …

What do we know about inflation? Inflation in this country is now running at 3.8 per cent. What does that mean? The real wages of Australians today are 2.1 per cent lower than on the day Labor took office. The purchasing power in Australians' pockets is 2.1 per cent lower today than it was four years ago. It's lower than in Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Chile, Spain, the United States, Denmark et cetera. That inflation figure, which is eating into the purchasing power of every single Australian family, is what the government should be focused on.

They shouldn't be talking about the opposition. The Australian people don't want senators in this place talking about themselves and issues inside the Canberra bubble for a few laughs and a few gags. They want us focused on the issues of concern to them, and those are inflation, high interest rates and how they're going to make ends meet. That's the expectation of the Australian people.

Times are tough out there. After nearly four years of Labor, insurance is up 39 per cent, energy is up 38 per cent, rent is up 22 per cent, health care is up 18 per cent, education is up 17 per cent and food is up 16 per cent. Those are the facts, and the focus of the Australian Labor Party should be on the Australian people, not on the internal machinations of the opposition. The focus of the Labor government should be on the Australian people.