PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr CALDWELL (Fadden—Opposition Chief Whip) (10:43): I thank my friend the member for Cook for bringing forward this motion. In the opening sentence, I don't think he could've summed it up better: 'sneaky and dishonest tactics to impose higher taxes on Australians'. Really, that's the summary right there.
The member for Brisbane talked about the Prime Minister's record and the record of this government. I don't think they should be as proud of it as what they're making it out to be. This is a government that, in the end, will be judged by its record of having high taxes, high debt and high inflation, and I'll expand on some of those things.
To all the people in the gallery: did you know that there is more than $77 billion worth of new taxes in the recent budget, did you know that national debt is shortly going to hit well over $1.2 trillion, and did you know that the inflationary pressures that this government is putting on the economy with their spending and their out-of-control taxation mean that, on average, the inflation under this government has been 4.1 per cent since it came to office?
Just 48 days ago, the Treasurer handed down a broken budget, and last week in this place we saw the Labor government team up with the Greens in a dirty, dishonest and, quite frankly, dangerous way in order to ram through its high-taxing agenda. That has shown us that their preparedness to rush through this budget and these high taxes has left all sorts of defects in the road.
Last week, we heard talk about carve outs and exemptions. Quite frankly, you really shouldn't have to start a budget repair within weeks of having delivered the budget. Now we're seeing Labor flip-flopping on whether they're going to fix the widow tax that's now been embedded within these new changes.
They knew the bill was defective. They didn't fix it when it could have been fixed. They rammed it through instead.
Are they going to fix the widow tax this week or not? We suspect that they probably won't, based on what the Treasurer was saying on TV yesterday. I just want to go back to the inflation point, because this is a really important point for Australians to understand when they're sitting at home and wondering why they feel poorer.
It's because our living standards have dropped dramatically. The inflation is a measure, basically, of how fast things get more expensive. During the coalition government from 2013 to 2022, the average of inflation was about 2.2 per cent.
Under this Labor government, the average inflation for the last four years has been 4.1 per cent. That is a significant difference. It means that things are getting more expensive at twice the rate they were under a coalition government.
The Treasurer comes in and says, 'Well, you know, when we came in it was high.' Guess what, mate? It has stayed high. It has stayed way too high.
The Reserve Bank needs to see it between two and three per cent, and, as I said, we're floating around 4.1 per cent on average. That is why, when you go to the store, you wonder why a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk or a block of chocolate or the washing powder or the toilet paper all seem more expensive, way more expensive, now than it did not that long ago.
It's inflation that is the reason. The Reserve Bank has had no choice but to act. They've had to act to intervene because their mandate is to bring down inflation through the means of monetary policy and their interest rates.
That's why interest rates at the moment are 4.35 per cent. We've seen 15 increases in the RBA rate since Labor came to office. For each and every Australian who has a mortgage, that means not only are they paying higher income tax under this Labor government than any other Australian in history; they've also got about $30,000 more on their mortgage thanks to this Treasurer and this incompetent Labor government.