Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

As Easter approaches, we have Australian households doing it tough not only because of the fuel crisis prompted by the conflict in the Middle East but because of what has happened over these past four years under the Albanese government. The truth is that Australians have endured the biggest collapse in living standards across the developed world in the past four years.

This is a tale of woe in the lead up to Easter. We have Australians working harder than ever, but they are worse off than ever. Australians are not earning any more, because real wages and real incomes are flat. More of what they earn is being taken from them by taxes. More of what they take home after the government has taken its cut in taxes has to go to service their mortgage and higher interest repayments. And what they are left with after all of this—after they've paid their tax and paid their mortgage—buys less because everything is more expensive. This is a toxic brew—no real-wage growth, high taxes, high interest rates, high inflation.

The best measure of this—the best measure that reflects Australia's lived reality right now—is the decline in Australia's real household disposable income per capita. This figure sounds archaic, but it measures what households are left with after government has taken its cut through taxes, after the bank has taken its cut through interest repayments and after inflation has taken its chunk. In Australia, real household disposable income per capita went down by seven per cent from mid-2022 to mid-2025, and it hasn't improved since mid-2025—a seven per cent decline in living standards over three years. The same period, across other advanced economies—Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, the United States, Canada—has seen real household disposable income increase by six per cent. Australia is not part of a global phenomenon here; Australia is an outlier. Australia is the worst performer in the advanced world. Let's unpack each of these in turn.

Real wages—we have not seen them grow in four years. The wage price index has not kept pace with the consumer price index. Why? This is because productivity is going backwards—the result of stifling regulation, the result of heavy handed industrial relations interventions. Without productivity gains, you cannot have sustainable real-wage growth.

We've got taxes that are higher than ever. You will hear those opposite talk about cost-of-living relief through the stage 3 income tax cuts, but, if you look at what the government has been taking from people in income tax, it has grown massively. Personal income tax receipts were $242 billion in 2022. According to the latest estimates in MYEFO, in 2025-26 they'll be $325 billion. That is the government taking $83 billion more in income tax over the past four years—a 34 per cent increase. So you're not earning any more. The government is taking more tax, and now you're having to pay more to the bank because we have seen 14 interest rate rises here in Australia under this government, which means the decision the week before last by the Reserve Bank is adding to people's mortgage repayments and the decision last month by the Reserve Bank is adding to people's mortgage repayments. In fact, the cumulative total of all those RBA rate increases under this government means that an average mortgage holder is paying $27,000 more a year in interest rates.

Then we've got inflation, with prices high across the board, meaning that what you're left with, after the government has taken its cut—after your real wages have not moved, after you've paid more in interest—buys less. Electricity is up by 38 per cent, gas by 42 per cent, food by 16 per cent, child care by 14 per cent, insurance by 39 per cent and rents by 22 per cent.

If we had a serious government, they would have used these good economic times to restore our fiscal balance sheet and get our economic house in order. Instead, all they've done is tax more and spend more. If we had a competent government, they would have done more to prepare us for this fuel shock coming from the Middle East. And if we had a good government, they would have been up-front with the Australian public from day one about the problems we face, rather than having us wait with bated breath for a 7 pm press conference by the Prime Minister.