Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Across Australia, families are standing in supermarket aisles, crunching numbers, putting items back on the shelves, swapping brands, cutting meals and asking themselves a question that they never used to: how has it got this expensive to feed my family? And they're right. It feels expensive because it is expensive. New inflation figures show that inflation is running at 3.8 per cent, which is higher than forecast, and stubbornly refusing to come down. The government says it's a global problem, but this is another Labor lie, because inflation in Australia is now worse than in every other major advanced economy—higher than in the United States, higher than in the United Kingdom, and higher than in Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Japan. While other countries are getting inflation under control, Australians are being let down—and not only let down but lied to.

Every week at the check-out, people are watching their grocery bills climb while they take less food home, and research shows that people under financial pressure gravitate to cheaper and less nutritious food. This government's reckless and out-of-control spending is not only robbing Australians financially; it's robbing them of the choice to eat better food. This is a crisis, and it's a crisis of Labor's making. Since Labor came to office, Australia has suffered the biggest drop in household disposable income anywhere in the world, and real wages have fallen to 2011 levels. It is a fact that you cannot spend your way out of inflation, but that is exactly what this government is trying to do, and Australian families are paying the price every single week at the check-out. The excuses keep coming from Labor under this government, but there is little real action for Australians, who deserve better.