QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator CADELL (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (15:06): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today. What we have here is some amnesia by this government. Every time you hear about anything good, we're told to look at what they've done, but, for anything bad, we heard that it's only been 4½ years, and they'll get to it.

When we talk about wages, they keep coming back with, 'Oh, low wages were a design factor.' Low real wage growth is better than backwards, negative real wage growth, and this is what we're talking about here. They talk about the headline number and say everyone gets more in their pay packet, but they forget to tell people: 'Your pay packet buys less. Your real wages are going backwards.

Instead of getting $100, you may be getting $120, but you're only able to get what would have been 90 bucks worth of gear in the old year.' That's what they forget. They forget the reality. What number is in your pay packet doesn't matter as much as what you can get for it, and you are getting less.

You are getting fewer groceries. You are getting less health care. You are getting less energy.

You are getting less rental accommodation for every dollar you earn now. They say: 'Oh, no. It's been 4½ years.

We haven't fixed it yet.' When are they going to fix it? They're talking about wage growth. It's like the captain of the Titanic saying: 'Good news.

The water's coming in slower now. You're still going to sink, but the water's coming in a little bit slower.' That is the up news of this government on everything we see. On everything, they're underperforming.

On housing, on page 158 in budget paper No. 1, it says that 35,000 fewer homes are being built. That's in their own budget papers. They say: 'We're getting to it.

We've got this plan. We're going to get there. We've got the five per cent housing thing'—which actually goes to as many foreign people as it does Australians.

You can be a foreigner and get a five per cent housing deposit and buy a house. That goes there. They've got that plan.

They've got the Housing Australia Future Fund, but they can't tell you how many homes have actually been built. They can tell you about acquiring. They tell you about all these things.

Well, in this life, activity isn't productivity, and this government is finding that out. Doing something—doing the wrong thing—doesn't mean you're fixing the problem. It just means you're doing something.

So let's get off this activity and all these things that we're doing. If they aren't fixing the problem, get rid of the things. We talk about productivity.

Remember the productivity roundtable, the biggest thing in the world, to make Australia more productive in the world? It talked about getting out there, what we could do and the barriers to it. I believe there was a senator sitting out the front at a coffee table saying: 'Energy prices to fix productivity are the No. 1 thing.

Change my mind.' Nothing has changed his mind, because nothing has happened in this regard. Australia's labour productivity is in the toilet. We are doing worse every month, every week and every year because of red tape, because we are strangling business and because this government thinks that, if the industry super fund can't buy you and they can't unionise you, you are not important to the economic growth of this country.

They think small business is the enemy. Small business is the engine that drives this economy. All these people want to do is work out how they can get their hands on the super of the workers, how they can get their union fees and how they can slow it down to get their big fat cats in the big businesses going.

This is what we get down to. We talk about the real wages failure. Every time it comes up, they don't mention that word 'real' because they live in an unreal world.

Let's talk about the real world, where these wages are going backwards and people are suffering. We're talking about interest rates—the real thing in the question we heard there. How is housing affordability better—even if prices are falling, we're wiping out billions of dollars of people's wealth across the nation.

When the interest rates go higher, your serviceability is less. You can't afford as much because your real wages are going down as the interest rates are higher and housing affordability is actually worse off—except they espouse it. What they're hoping is that you won't do the research yourself.

You won't look at what they are. They have been betrayed by Bill Kelty, a man who was a cornerstone of the ACTU, a cornerstone of the union movement and a cornerstone of Labor. He has called this government out for the fraud it is.

He will hold you accountable, just like the Australian people will.