Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (12:23): I rise to speak on the ministerial statement on the economy. More than two years ago the Treasurer gave a similar statement to the House, as did I, just a few months after the election. Australians hoped that Labor would deliver on their many promises for cheaper energy, for cheaper mortgages and for a better life. But, as I warned back then, the risk for Australia was that Labor made a bad situation worse. And, sadly, that is exactly what has happened: Labor has made a bad situation worse. In their nearly three years in office, the Albanese Labor government has made bad decisions, the wrong decisions, and had the wrong priorities—like spending 18 months and $500 million on the Prime Minister's failed Voice referendum at a time when families were battling every single day throughout that 18 months with the rising cost of living and the collapse in their living standards. Three expansionary budgets have kept inflation and interest rates higher for longer under this government. In the last few years there have been clear lessons in elections for policymakers right across the developed world. Politicians will be judged by outcomes, not gestures. Politicians will be judged by delivery, not meetings; by action, not promises; and by outcomes, not alliteration. You don't fight inflation with alliterated three-word slogans. I don't know how much of them I counted in that speech just then, but they were endless. That's not how you fight inflation. It is clear that this government has not learned these lessons that we have seen across the world. While the Treasurer says that this is the landing that we have been planning for and preparing for, there is nothing soft about this landing—nothing at all. What we have seen from this government is a crash landing, not a soft landing. We see that by virtue of the fact that Australians' standard of living has collapsed. What we have seen is completely unprecedented. Since data began being collected on the household account budget, we have not seen a hit to Australians' standard of live that is even close to resembling what we have seen under this government. The reality is prices are still rising and Australians have now experienced almost three years of above-band inflation. The price level is what Australians are feeling, and that is why inflation needs to be attacked aggressively and early, and this government has failed. Australians are paying the price at the checkout. Cost pressures are eating away at small business margins right across Australia. There is nothing soft about the pain that Australians are feeling, and we see in our electorates right across this country the enormous pain of Australians whose standard of living, as I said, has collapsed. If this is going to plan, as the Treasurer just said, Australians should be and are deeply concerned. The fact is that, after nearly three years of this government, Australians are poorer. That's what happens under Labor governments. We see that in the data. The employee cost of living index shows that, for employee households, the cost of living is up 18.9 per cent since Labor Party and Labor came to power. That's a big part of the reason why Australians are poorer than when Labor came to power. We have seen, as I said, Australians' standard of living slashed, with the largest fall in real disposable incomes per person in the developed world. As I said, that's a collapse of 8.7 per cent under this government, which is unprecedented in Australian history. It's unprecedented across the world—we're the only one that's seen 8.7 per cent—and it's unprecedented in Australian history. This is what this Treasurer has presided over: an absolute collapse in our standard of living. Interest rates have increased, of course, 12 times. Mortgage interest payments have tripled, and a family with a typical mortgage in my part of the world is $35,000 a year worse off. That's $35,000 they have to find in after-tax income. Of course, we have seen taxes rising, with personal income taxes up by 25 per cent since Labor came to power. Household savings have collapsed. They're next to nothing now. How can you save in those circumstances? When your standard of living has collapsed, your savings collapse because the only thing you can do is crack open the piggy bank. That's all you can do. And, of course, we see that our core inflation is running higher than advanced nations. Homegrown inflation is now running at almost seven times imported inflation. This Treasurer only a few days ago wanted to blame Vladimir Putin and now Donald Trump for inflation in this country. It's always someone else's fault. Energy prices have increased, with where the underlying price of electricity having risen more than 30 per cent before the election. I can assure you that, with this energy minister continuing in place, it's only going to get worse; we can be sure of that. GDP per capita has gone backwards for six quarters. We see GDP per capita going backwards. The Treasurer claimed it had when we were in government. It hadn't; he got it wrong. But, for six quarters, it's gone backwards, and that's the economic growth measure that counts—GDP per person—because that's what you feel; per person is how you feel it. For six quarters it's gone backwards under this government and under this Treasurer, and labour productivity has collapsed by 6.3 per cent. Labour productivity has gone backwards by 6.3 per cent. Meanwhile, business insolvencies—and we represent small-business electorates; we know that they are the heart of the economy in our electorates right across Australia—under this government and this Treasurer are at a record high. On every metric, Australians are not better off than they were almost three years ago. They are worse off, and increasingly we see an economy where aspiration feels like a luxury good. Increasingly, we are seeing an economy where Australians believe they can't get ahead, and that is a sad state of affairs. That is not the Australia I believe in, and it's not the Australia I grew up in. This is Labor through and through. History has shown it to us time and time again. We see that in particular in the way Labor has managed its migration program. Australia is a proud migrant nation and will remain so. We're a proud migrant nation. But we also need to face the reality. Labor plans to bring in 1.67 million migrants over five years, while falling short of its own targets on housing by a long, long way. To put this in perspective, one person is arriving to live in Australia every 44 seconds. But, as the RBA governor has said, we haven't been building enough housing for our population. That is the truth. Under this government, building approvals have fallen to the lowest level in over a decade, and commencements have dropped by almost nine per cent to just 158,000 new starts in 2023-24. You simply cannot bring in almost 1.7 million people over five years without any planning for it, without the homes, without the supporting infrastructure—without the playing fields and without all of those amenities we know are necessary to live the great Australian life that we grew up with and that we want to see our kids and grandkids grow up with as well. This government's 'big Australia' policy, which is forcing Australians out of homes, wasn't something the Australian public voted for at the last election. They didn't vote for a big Australia, and I don't think they're going to vote for a big Australia at the next election either. For so many, the great Australian dream of homeownership, as I said, has never felt so far out of reach. I said that Labor have had three budgets and almost three years to get this right, but at every hurdle they have stumbled, and now they tell us this was their plan all along. This was the Treasurer's plan. He is just told us that in his speech. This was his plan for a landing. Well, it was clearly a plan for a crash landing. Right at the heart of this is the reckless spending we've seen from Labor. They have added $315 billion of spending. There is no economist that will say that adding more fuel to the inflationary fire by government spending doesn't drive up inflation. It's Mickey Mouse economics. But we do have to remember that what we have in the Treasurer opposite is not a doctor of economics; we have a doctor of spin—a doctor of Paul Keating. We have seen extra spending of $30,000 per household under this government. On policy decisions, Labor is spending $4 for every dollar it's saved. The Treasurer likes to give some other weird analysis, but that is the truth. That is in the budget papers, on what Chris Richardson calls 'the table of truth'. You can't hide that one—$4 of spending for every dollar raised. Government spending is now at its highest level on record outside of the pandemic, according to the Final Budget Outcome from last year, and the structural deficit, of course, is heading only in one direction. We see that because there's red—red ink—as far as the eye can see in the budget because this Treasurer has never run structural surpluses. He runs windfall surpluses, and he admits that in his own budget. The OECD and IMF have been consistent in their calls for stronger fiscal safeguards. The RBA have said extra government spending is making their job harder—they've said it; they've said it's making their job harder—and economist after economist has made the point that you cannot spend your way out of an inflation crisis. Dr Chalmers interjecting— Mr TAYLOR: I hear a lot of chirping from the Treasurer, but we should listen to what Shane Oliver had to say. He said: … the RBA's job would be a lot easier if they didn't have the surge in government spending that has been occurring over the last few years. And independent economist Richard Holden has said, 'The current government has handed down multiple highly expansionary budgets.' This Treasurer should listen to what some of these economists have got to say. He clearly doesn't, and it's why the coalition has now opposed over a hundred billion dollars of spending through this parliament. They've been important and tough decisions to make. What might be good spending at a time when you don't have inflationary pressures like we've have is not good at a time when you do have inflationary pressures like we have right now. We've been upfront about the kind of spending that we think is undisciplined or unhelpful while families are dealing with a cost-of-living crisis. They are having to manage their household budgets, and this government hasn't had the focus on household budgets that it should. We've seen in this spending, as I've already said, things like the $500 million for the Prime Minister's failed Voice referendum. That wasn't just a waste of money. We saw a government complete distracted by that in its first 18 months in government. We've seen $620,000 just for a speechwriter to make the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme more empathetic—$620,000 for that one. We've seen $40 million for a spin unit in the Treasurer's department. We've seen grants to the CFMEU! Where does this stuff come from? There was a billion dollars for a US company to build a quantum computer that Australia's own Chief Scientist has said probably won't deliver us anything more quickly than the private sector would. And we've seen 36,000 new Canberra based public servants. We learn, in the numbers that came forward in the last week or so that that's costing Australian taxpayers an additional $5 billion a year—a year! And we know their plan is to continue to bloat the Public Service here in Canberra. That's how they like to spend Australian taxpayers' money. We've been making the tough calls in the parliament. It's important that you do that when you face a cost-of-living crisis. It's important that you do that when inflation is raging. Interest rates are amongst the slowest in the world to come down, of course. Those calls need to be made to get inflation down and get interest rates down. The Treasurer has an opportunity in MYEFO, the mid-year budget, to finally get this right. He's had three failed budgets, but he's got one more chance here. The Treasurer might make out it's just an update—nothing to see here—but actions matter, decisions matter, and Australians will continue to pay the price for inaction and bad decisions. We need a budget update that does three things. Firstly, it needs to restore our standard of living and tame inflation by taking pressure off the price of essentials and delivering affordable energy for families and businesses. On restoring our standard of living he's got a long way to go, because he smashed our standard of living—over eight per cent in 2½ years—but it needs to be restored. So far we've seen nothing that even comes close to restoring our standard of living to what it was when those opposite came to power. Secondly, it needs to restore prosperity and create opportunity for all Australians, so small businesses are rewarded for their efforts and hard work and young Australians have a chance to own a home. Thirdly, it needs to restore budget discipline and honesty, including reintroducing the fiscal guardrails that were established by Peter Costello back in the 1990s and that the government got rid of as soon as they came to government. Now, a failure of those three tests—restoring our standard of living and taming inflation, restoring prosperity and creating opportunity, and restoring budget discipline and honesty—will continue to drive this country down the pathway it has been going over the last 2½ years. Right now we have an opportunity. It's about choosing a different future—a future where fairness, opportunity, enterprise and prosperity are within reach of every single Australian, a future where Australia is back on track, a future where Australia is going in the right direction, not the wrong direction that we've seen under this government. In order to do that, we need an agenda focused on getting the basics right. That's why a Dutton led coalition will get Australia back on track, by delivering on that basic economic agenda. That's how we restore our standard of living. That's how we restore opportunity and ensure we have future prosperity. We need to get the economy back to basics, fighting high prices and interest rates first, winding back regulatory roadblocks, boosting productivity and delivering lower, simpler and fairer taxes. We'll also stand up for consumers. We'll stand up for those hardworking Australians who go to the supermarket wanting a fair deal, for small businesses and farmers, by delivering stronger penalties for anticompetitive behaviour in the supermarket and hardware sectors. We'll support Australians to build businesses, not just bureaucracies. We'll ensure that Australians have more affordable and reliable energy—and we're seeing the marvellous work that's being done by our shadow minister for energy behind me. We see the farcical behaviour of the minister for energy, who we now know has a plan that's going to cost over $600 billion. When our allies and friends in the UK and the US say, 'We'd like to work with you to build a genuine nuclear capability in your country,' he says no. He says no, because this is a bloke who always seems to know better, doesn't he? He always knows better. This is the bloke who promised a $275 reduction in electricity bills. You know, when he couldn't deliver that, he went to the Treasurer and said, 'I need your money.' That's what he said. An opposition member: Give us 300, Jim! Mr TAYLOR: 'Give us some money, Jimmy, because I can't get my job done and I need your money to do it.' And that's what we'll continue to see. We will support Australians with lower-cost energy to build businesses, not bureaucracies, because bureaucracy is what we are seeing being built by this government. We'll ensure that Australians see a revival of the dream of homeownership. That's why we've announced a policy in recent weeks to unlock 500,000 new homes—$5 billion to unlock 500,000 new homes, with shovel-ready infrastructure that will enable homes to be delivered faster. We'll reduce migration and place a two-year ban on foreign investors buying existing homes. We will tackle union corruption that is continuing to drive up the cost of construction in this country. And we will take action to ensure that we have safer communities, including online. A Dutton led coalition will get Australia back on track.