QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator COLBECK (Tasmania) (15:28): The debate during take note today just demonstrates yet again that, just because Labor say it, it doesn't mean that it's real. In fact, Australians are coming to realise that you can't trust or believe anything that this government says. That's because they'll say one thing at one point in time and they'll change it again later.
They say that real wages are moving again, and yet, when you look at the real numbers, when you look at what's happening in the economy, real wages have fallen back to about 2011 levels. That takes away all of the growth that occurred during the period of time when we were in government, when real wages actually grew. Real wages grew under the period of time that the coalition was in government.
Was it slow and low levels of growth? Yes, it was. But, oh, for a low-inflation economy.
That's what we would like to see now. But Labor, because of their spending, have lost control of the economy. The Reserve Bank has told them that.
The Reserve Bank has talked about the problem of productivity, which is now going backwards, which is why Australians' real living standards have fallen back to 2011 levels. In four years they've destroyed what happened in the previous decade. They stand up and talk about how well everything's going and how wonderfully they're supporting Australians, but real Australians know because they're feeling it.
They're feeling it when they go to the supermarket, where eggs have gone up 36½ per cent; milk 29.7 per cent; coffee, tea and cocoa 26.9 per cent; dairy products 25.6 per cent; bread 22.7 per cent; and breakfast cereals 20.9 per cent. You cannot trust or believe a thing that this Labor government says. When they come out, as they have in this debate today, and talk about references to the truth, I've got to say that you'd choke on your Weeties, because they will say one thing before the election and then do the exact opposite after the election, and they have done so on a number of occasions.
They have destroyed the trust of the Australian people. They stand up here during question time, batting back, ignoring reality and ignoring the truth. Meanwhile Australians, when they go to the supermarket, can feel the impact of this government's mismanagement on the economy, to the extent that the Reserve Bank talks about being concerned about the productive capacity of the economy not growing.
As long as the productive capacity of the economy isn't growing, we cannot grow very fast without running into inflationary pressures. That is how all these things are linked. Because productivity is so bad, it will be inflationary if the economy grows too quickly.
The Labor Party, under this government, has lost control of that, and Australians are suffering because of it. They're seeing it at the supermarket, and they know that they can't trust or believe a thing that this government says. Question agreed to.