Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor's reckless spending is far beyond the means of the Australian taxpayer, and this year's budget will be no different. Labor's reckless spending and terrible policies actively work to make Australians poorer. Under Labor's irresponsible spending and mass migration policies, our living standards have gone backwards. The record since Labor's election in 2022 is telling. Typical full-time workers now pay between 40 and 50 per cent of their earnings on their mortgages, up from 32 per cent in 2022. Average rent prices have increased more than 42 per cent in the past five years, with the average renter now having to spend more than a third of their income. Labor has committed many billions of dollars to improving housing supply without actually increasing it but refuses to do anything about demand by slashing immigration. Record numbers have arrived in the past year despite Labor's promises to reduce immigration.

Since 2022, Australia has experienced an eight per cent decline in disposable income, the biggest decline in the developed world. Real net disposable income has declined by almost $1,000 per household. More Australians than ever before—around seven per cent of the workforce—are working multiple jobs just to make ends meet.

Australians are paying more tax too. From 2022 to 2024, under the Albanese Labor government, tax revenue per capita increased by more than $2,700. This is due to factors like inflation from government spending, bracket creep and additional GST from rising prices of goods and services. Gross debt per capita is now more than $36,000, up from just over $33,000 in 2023. Gross debt reached an unwelcome milestone this year, tipping over $1 trillion. Government spending is around 27 per cent of GDP, even higher than during the pandemic. Don't even get me started on the net zero disaster, which has resulted in power prices rising around 40 per cent or more since 2022 and costing taxpayers many billions a year, much of it hidden from public view.

This is not sustainable. This cannot continue. Labor has been dangling the notion of a big reform budget addressing intergenerational inequity. The hypocrisy of it is breathtaking. For the past four years, Labor has been robbing young Australians of their future. Labor is also now robbing retirees and pensioners of their health rebates and breaking its promise to leave capital gains tax and negative gearing alone. The exodus of investors from housing is just going to increase rents even more.

Australia can do much better. One Nation has already shown the way, and this has been reinforced by the good voters of Farrer, who elected our candidate, David Farley, on the weekend. We've identified more than $90 billion that could be easily cut from government spending. We would put $40 billion back into Australians' pockets and pay down our crippling debt instead of bequeathing it to future generations. We will scrap net zero. This will reduce the cost of living and remove the straightjacket from our economic growth and development. We will slash immigration to reduce housing demand and ban foreign ownership to increase housing supply. Younger Australians can then look forward to a future in which they will own a home.

The 18th century English writer Samuel Johnson famously said:

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

What I've raised today is about the debt this government has put us in—the whole country—their overspend. And they keep saying to me, 'You don't support our policies.' I don't support your policies on housing because they have not worked. You put the money into a fund, and guess what? The houses haven't been built. You've got mass migration coming into the country—supply and demand. Wake up to yourselves. If you put good policies out there for the Australian people, you will get support from One Nation, but I haven't seen it yet.