Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (15:54): The member for Whitlam visited my electorate last week. He came to Wagga Wagga upon my invitation and conducted an antiscams forum with me. I want to publicly acknowledge and thank him for the work that he is doing in this important public policy area, which is building on what we did as a coalition government. I now want to take him up on the fact that he said Labor inherited 'a diabolical mess'. What they inherited was a nation which was rated, judged, by the John Hopkins institute, no less, as being the second-best nation in the world for its COVID-19 response. By spending money—yes, a lot of it—we kept tens of thousands of Australians alive. We kept tens of thousands of Australians in jobs and kept the doors open for tens of thousands of businesses. We did that despite the backdrop of those opposite being very negative about lots of the policies that we put forward and the state Labor premiers also often being obstinate when we were trying to bring forward good policies in what was a terrible time of a global pandemic. On budget night this year, the respected economist Chris Richardson had this to say: My big ask of the Budget was that it didn't poke the inflationary bear. I don't think it passed that test. The government said it would be careful not to frontload its new costs. But that's exactly what it did—its new dollars are both big AND fast. In the coming year they're eight times the size of what they are by 2027-28. So this budget narrows the Reserve Bank's already narrow path. Inflation is high. It is too high, and it's going up and up under Labor. Today in the Australian, Mr Richardson is critical of the decisions by federal and state governments, and every mainland state in Australia is under the steed of a Labor government. He talks about decisions in recent budgets to pour billions of additional dollars into the economy under the guise of cost-of-living relief that could ultimately make life harder for struggling households by keeping inflation higher for longer. This is what he said: Governments are throwing a lot of money at the symptoms of the cost-of-living crisis, but that worsens the cause of it. And the cause is too many dollars chasing two little stuff … Governments have abandoned the field in the inflation fight. We are fighting the inflation fight one-handed. When we talk about being one-handed, we've got a lot of families and small business owners with their hand very much behind their backs, because they are struggling, and it is tough out there. I know the member for Whitlam acknowledged that and so did the Shadow Treasurer in their contributions to this matter of public importance discussion. It is so tough for people out there. I ask this question of people who might be listening to this broadcast: are you better off now, or were you better off prior to May 2022? People are much the poorer now. In fact, most households are paying a thousand dollars more on their power bills than they were when the coalition was in government. Ms Bell: Shame! Mr McCORMACK: That is a shame, member for Moncrieff. Indeed, they are paying more for rent—that's if you can find affordable housing. Those people who have mortgage rates are doing it so very tough at the moment. It is so difficult to get into the housing market, and Labor are making it just more difficult by their policies and by what they do every day. Of course, then we've got those people trying to make ends meet when they go to the grocery store. They are getting fewer groceries and they are paying more for them. They are paying more for petrol every time they go to the petrol browser. We just see no end in sight to this mess. We need to get Australia back on track. As the Leader of the Opposition has said repeatedly, what we will do when next in government is rein in inflationary spending to take the pressure off inflation. The member for Rankin doesn't get that. He is the Treasurer; he ought to get it. We'll not be spending $13.7 billion on corporate welfare for green hydrogen and critical minerals. Some of the policies in the energy space and some of what Labor is doing to pay $107 million to Western Australian sheep farmers to stop farming is just a nonsense, and it's causing inflationary pressures. It is making things more difficult. We'll wind back Labor's intervention and remove regulatory roadblocks, which are suffocating the economy and stopping businesses from getting ahead. That's what we should be doing. We should be helping our businesses, supporting our businesses, supporting the economy and making sure that we address cost-of-living pressures.