Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (18:04): The Treasurer has said two things on the matter of inflation in recent times. The first thing the Treasurer has said is that it is someone else's fault, that these are global factors. As Senator Smith said in his contribution, this is now an Australian problem—and it's an Australian problem because we know that the government is putting more money than it should into the economy, and that is adding to demand. We also know that, compared to other jurisdictions that we generally compare ourselves to—our peers abroad—we have much higher inflation. Steve Hamilton, who is a good economist, said in the Financial Review back in June that, after more than a year of government and amid the Reserve Bank's efforts, which included raising rates by another quarter of a per cent on Tuesday, 'the government's claims that this is all someone else's fault are increasingly untenable'. If they were untenable in June, they're absolutely ridiculous now, in November. Yesterday, Mr Chalmers said in his statements to the press that the government was helping the RBA, which I think is a very interesting turn of phrase because, of course, if he were helping the RBA, then he would be running a contractionary fiscal stance. The government has three options. They could be running an expansionary stance, they could be running a neutral stance or they could be running a contractionary stance. The position that the RBA would prefer—given that it's raising rates and smashing mortgage holders—is to have the government run its fiscal policy in line with the monetary policy and, therefore, run it as a contractionary position. When Michele Bullock, the new governor, was at estimates last week, I was able to ask the new governor: What is the government's position here? What is fiscal policy in Australia doing? Is it expansionary, is it neutral or is it contractionary? Ms Bullock said that it is neutral. So the government is running a neutral position when it needs to be crimping the budget. It needs to be running a contractionary fiscal stance. We know from table 3.2 in the budget, which outlines the new spending decisions that have been taken, that Chalmers is spending $14 billion on new decisions in this current financial year. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): Senator Bragg, I would just remind you to refer to people in the other place by their correct titles. Senator BRAGG: Mr Chalmers is spending $14 billion in this year—a cumulative total in new decisions taken in the most recent budget of $42 billion. So the government is running at least a neutral—or perhaps an expansionary—fiscal position. The budget papers tell us that, and the Reserve Bank has underlined that with its statements to the Senate last week. Why is this the case? I believe this is the case because, no matter how well intentioned the government may be, the government is unable to say no to its favourite vested interest. It's unable to turn off the spending tap, and it's been unable to stop delivering policy only for their fellow travellers and the rent-seekers and the bloodsuckers that run the Labor Party's preselections and man their polling places. The policy support that the vested interests of the unions and super funds get is backed up by the Commonwealth budget, because the Commonwealth budget is engineered to support their vested interests. Unfortunately, the people paying the price for Labor's inability to say no are the mortgage holders. Around one-third of Australians have got a mortgage, and these people are paying the price. We are not headed in the right direction here. It's all about the trajectory. If the budget position were contractionary, then you could imagine that the Reserve Bank would be able to stop what it's doing. But I believe that, sadly, the Reserve Bank is going to be forced to continue to increase rates because the Commonwealth government is sticking more and more money into the economy because it can't say no to the unions and all the other bloodsuckers and rent-seekers that are part of the modern Australian Labor Party's movement. The reality is that we are stuck with having stubbornly high inflation. While our competitors around the world are able to manage inflation, we are stuck in the lane of having persistently high inflation, which is going to hurt all mortgage holders in Australia.