MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Ms PENFOLD (Lyne) (15:40): The Treasurer told Australians the worst of inflation was well and truly behind us. Tell that to a family whose mortgage repayments have just risen. Tell that to a pensioner frightened to open their electricity bill.

Tell that to a small-business owner wondering whether they can keep their doors open. Australians are working longer hours, paying steeper bills and still finding themselves falling further behind. While families are forced to tighten their belts, this Labor government refuses to do the same.

It refuses to honestly confront reality. It refuses to confront the hardship it has thrown Australians into. We are caught in the jaws of a cost-of-living crisis, watching living standards plummet and interest rates rocket to their highest in 15 years.

The government has lost control of inflation because it has lost control of its spending, and it is everyday Australians who are left to pick up the tab. Since Labor came to office, gas prices have risen 44 per cent, insurance 43 per cent, rent and housing 24 per cent, bread and cheese 22 per cent, coffee and tea 24 per cent and eggs a whopping 37 per cent. These are not luxuries but the unavoidable price of simply making it through each day.

Let me lay bare just how real this pain is with some hard numbers. A family with an average new mortgage of $731,000 is paying about $31,000 a year more in annual interest than when Labor came to office. In my electorate of Lyne, families feel this pressure every single day.

How much more does this government expect them to give up? This government is squeezing small business from all sides. Their borrowing costs are higher; their insurance is higher; their electricity is higher; their wages, rent and compliance costs are higher; yet their customers have less and less to spend.

Now they face the fiasco of the credit card surcharge ban. Regional business owners are rightly furious. Thanks to this government, small business has been forced to shoulder the burden of card processing fees, whilst the banks and payment providers are allowed to pocket their fees.

It begs the question: what did Australian businesses do to become the enemy of the state and the ATM for the Labor Party? What exactly does this government have against small business? Where will they get their much-needed revenue from if these small businesses inevitably have to shut their doors?

Then the Australian Taxation Office made an extraordinary proposal to stop accepting credit card payments from December. For businesses facing tens of thousands of dollars in BAS and PAYG liabilities, credit cards provide a vital short-term cash flow buffer. The government has now delayed that decision following an outcry.

But what does this decision say about this government's understanding of small business? It says that they don't understand it at all. How could they when none of them in cabinet has business experience, including, unbelievably, the Treasurer?

Small businesses are told to swallow even more costs, all while losing the flexibility they depend on to survive. What makes this even more maddening is that the government demands restraint from everyone except itself. Commonwealth spending is at a 40-year high, excluding the pandemic.

Gross government debt is over $1 trillion. Productivity has fallen around five per cent under Labor. What always follows when government spending runs wild?

We get runaway taxes and runaway debt because every dollar Canberra spends has to come from somewhere. Australians do not have a spending problem; Labor does. Had Labor simply kept spending under control, the latest budget outcome could have been a $22 billion surplus instead of another damning deficit.

But Labor keeps spending, keeps borrowing and keeps feeding the bureaucracy. The coalition believes government must live within its means. That means controlling spending growth, cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, reducing corporate welfare and restoring productivity.

Australians should not be forced to work harder, sacrifice more and pay higher taxes just to bankroll a government that refuses to rein in its spending. Once again, this government has proven it is way out of its depth. It has proven it does not know how to manage the economy.

It has proven that it only knows how to take, take, take—take your money, take your economic security and tear this country down.