Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Many Australians are doing it tough as we come into this Easter holiday break. But let me take you back just one month before the start of hostilities in the Middle East and before the impacts of those hostilities started to affect the global economy. Australians were already doing it tough. They'd seen their standard of living fall further and faster than other comparable nations—the biggest decline in our standard of living in decades. Yes, there has been an international shock, but we already had inflation well above the Reserve Bank band. We already had an interest rate rise based on the pre-conflict state of the Australian economy under Labor.

Heading into this Easter break, we now face an additional challenge and one that has been dismally managed by this Labor government, and that is the fuel crisis triggered by events in the Middle East. I've spoken to so many farmers who are in a state of bewilderment, a state of uncertainty, as they contemplate what this means for their business not just over the next two weeks but over the year ahead. This crisis has ramifications that stretch out in front of farmers, small-business people and families not just over the Easter break but for months and the year ahead. Labor has failed.