MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Mr KENNEDY (Cook) (15:30): Cost of living is not a problem in Australia right now; it's a symptom. It's a symptom of poor budget and economic management. It's the nightmare millions of Australian mortgage holders and small businesses are living, while this government lives its dream.

Right now we have the highest ever number, in Australia's history, of small and medium businesses going bankrupt. The number has never been higher since we started keeping records. We have mortgage holders right now who've had four interest rate rises this year.

I've seen them in tears, losing their house—one woman, in particular, who could not make her mortgage repayments. There are 43 advanced economies in the world. They're basically every country you'd want to live in.

Only one of those 43 advanced economies has had four interest-rate rises—just one—and that's Australia. The truth is that we have an inflation problem in Australia, and the truth is that this pre-existed the war in Iran. Of those 43 countries, we had the third highest inflation prior to the war in Iran.

We already had a domestic homegrown inflation problem. There are a couple of ways we can deal with this. The Reserve Bank can raise interest rates four times, as I just talked about, and the one third—Australian mortgage holders—are forced to cut their spending.

They're forced to forgo nights out and holidays away, and many of them cut back on essentials. Some of them are forced to give up their houses. That's one way.

The other way is this. More than one in four of every dollar spent in this country is spent by Treasurer Chalmers; it's spent by the federal government. That's one in four—at the very time we're asking one third of Australians to cut their spending.

This group is bearing all the brunt, along with the Australian business owners. Treasurer Chalmers over here, spending one in four dollars in the economy, is actually increasing his spending, while you at home are being forced to wear rate rise after rate rise and cut into essential after essential. The Treasurer is actually increasing his spending, and you deserve to be angry about that.

I recently had a small business forum of 100 small businesses in Cook last week. These people feel betrayed by the government—absolutely betrayed. They are now the highest taxed generation in Australia's history.

And it's not just me who thinks this. Just earlier today, the former chief economist of the ANZ, Mr Hogan, said about interest rates right now—and, sadly, it's going to get worse—'The reality is the interest rate probably does need to be up around five or higher. That would take at least another two hikes.

We're probably going to need a cash rate around five, but there is a better way. And the governments of Australia, state and federal, had the opportunity earlier this year in their budget to pull back on their spending.' He went on to say: 'They're all looking to grow at around three per cent real this year and, of course, the economy can only grow at two. And the RBA needs it to grow at like one and a half to get inflation down.

So governments are actually not doing anything to show restraint, and forcing the rest of us to show restraint. And, if we don't, the RBA is going to force us.' He then went on to explain that there is a better way, and that is for the governments of Australia to cut their spending—their recurrent spending and their investment spending—as much. That's from the former chief economist of the ANZ Bank.

The Treasurer should come into this chamber now and tell us how he is going to cut his spending, so the one-third of Australian households who are struggling and those 15,000 small business owners who have gone bankrupt this year do not need to cut theirs. Some of these people are in tears around dining room tables in Australia, realising they're losing their house, they're losing their business, while this guy in here continues to increase his spending.

Well, it's not good enough.