Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (18:45): I spoke last month about Labor's Future Made in Australia Bill and likened it to Labor's use of the term 'made in Australia' to Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer's apprentice in Disney's 1940 classic Fantasia. In the story, Mickey, as the incompetent apprentice, takes the magician's wand and inadvertently animates mops, buckets and furniture, in the process creating chaos in the wizard's tower. Labor's Mickey Mouse apprenticeship is on full display as described by the independent Reserve Bank of Australia, who called out the Labor government's spending as driving the rising cost of living. Australia is the only major economy where inflation is rising, not falling. Labor's homegrown inflation crisis, thanks to the $315 billion of spending, mostly on big government agenda items and equivalent to $30,000 more per household since they took office, is incredible. Household disposable income is heading south while in comparable economies household income is heading north.

My constituents in Mallee are feeling that cost-of-living pain acutely. We are living in Labor's homegrown cost-of-living crisis, and no amount of waving of wands, press conference trickery, TP tactics or pulling spending rabbits out of hats will convince the Australian public that this government has a fiscal clue what it is doing. Thankfully, Mickey's Fantasia mess is cleaned up when the wise wizard returns to set everything aright. The coalition's role has ever been thus in Australian politics: righting Labor economic chaos. My hope is sooner rather than later.

The coalition does not support this bill. We worked on a bipartisan position for over 18 months, but we are now at a point where, as the shadow Treasurer said this week, we need certainty and stability, not more change, at the Reserve Bank. The RBA is under unprecedented attack from this Albanese the Labor government and some of their proxies in the retired Labor operative space, as I will go into later. Even Gough Whitlam acknowledged the need for his ministers to fly economy, not first class, during a cost-of-living crisis his government faced. This government would make Gough Whitlam blush, such is the Albanese Labor government's bluster, trickery and gaslighting of Australians.

The coalition believes in the stable, credible and independent Reserve Bank of Australia. The independent RBA has hiked the cash rate 11 times on Labor's watch. The last cash rate hike was over 300 days ago, on 8 November 2023, yet Labor want to shift the blame to the RBA somehow smashing the economy. With Labor's abysmal track record of picking winners, the last thing we want is for Labor to stich up the Reserve Bank board. They've wrecked other government institutions with government appointments, and there is a huge cloud over Labor's connections with the disgraced CFMEU and questionable operatives in industry super. The coalition are very cautious about letting sack-and-stack Labor pick the team when Coach Chalmers is taking Australians to the bottom of the cost-of-living global ladder.

We on this side of the House have serious questions—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Wilkie ): Order. I would remind the member for Mallee to refer to the Treasurer by his title.

Dr WEBSTER: The Treasurer. We on this side of the House have serious questions about how committed the Albanese government is to the continued independence of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Every day, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister demonstrate they are more focused on fighting others and shifting blame than fighting their homegrown cost-of-living crisis. The Treasurer is trying to fight and pin the blame for his own economic woes onto the Reserve Bank, the opposition leader, the Productivity Commission, the laws of economics and even his hero and old mentor, Paul Keating, over superannuation taxes. The Prime Minister, members of the government frontbench and Labor-aligned commentators, like Stephen Conroy and Stephen Koukoulis, joined in like children whacking a pinata, hoping the lollies of public support would fall out for them.

On Friday, ALP president Wayne Swan said that he was 'very disappointed' in the Reserve Bank and that it was 'punching itself in the face'. This was the same man who, in his stint as Treasurer, projected budget surpluses but never delivered one. The Rudd-Swan government was a master at converting black into red—net savings into net debt. Labor's frothing and loathing directed at the RBA exposes that they can't handle the truth. Rather than take responsibility—what a novel concept, responsible government—Labor goes around attacking truth tellers, threatening them with consequences for speaking the truth. They stack and undermine our independent institutions. They force those who come in good faith to negotiate with the government, even priests, to sign non-disclosure agreements.

One senior Labor figure has reportedly described the RBA to the ABC recently as 'barbarians' and 'weirdos' in the 'thrall of a bizarre group-think' and that the Reserve Bank chair, Michele Bullock, is a 'nutter'.  This brave unnamed source said, 'This is all coming from a Labor government fighting everything but inflation, a government that attacks the Leader of the Opposition for his truth-telling on the cost of living and accuses him of being the bad guy for telling the truth.' Perhaps the truth bombs from the RBA hit their mark the best when they criticised government spending as a driver of Labor's homegrown inflation crisis. After some pointed criticisms from the government, the RBA explained that their comment was also directed at state governments.

In my home state of Victoria, sadly, Labor has done incredible damage not only to Victoria's economy but also dragging down the national economy while they do it. This is the same Victorian Labor government that, to use a popular phrase, 'smashed the economy' in Victoria by making Melbourne the lockdown capital of the world. The Victorian Labor government was so inept that it was re-elected on a promise to host the Commonwealth Games. It then embarrassed Victoria and the nation after the election by admitting they couldn't afford to host it after all. It took a Freedom of Information request. In June last year, the Victorian health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, wrote to Treasurer Pallas urging for an urgent bailout to save the state hospitals. It gets worse. Victorian Labor's priority primary care centres were rebranded urgent care centres, and, hey presto, Mickey Mouse, the apprentice Labor here in Canberra, came along and bailed out the clinics, saying, 'The Commonwealth will now run them.'

It should be bad enough that the Albanese Labor government is fighting everyone but the cost-of-living crisis. Now they are running a protection racket for the spend-happy Victorian Labor but bailing them out of their own mess. Getting answers out of the secretive Allan Labor government about their fiscal standing is just as hard as getting the Albanese Labor government to admit its economic missteps and take responsibility for its cost-of-living crisis. This Albanese Labor government is not only at war with the institutions but also with the overwhelming opinion of eminent economists as well. RMIT economist Professor Sinclair Davidson said:

… all the economic indicators are going the wrong way, and what is the government doing? Fighting with the RBA.

Former RBA board member Warwick McKibbin said:

You want to think that the government and the central bank are working together in the same direction for the benefit of the country. To make those sorts of comments suggested that maybe there's some other agendas at work—and that's not helpful.

Another former RBA board member, Graham Kraehe, said:

For the treasurer to then be coming out and saying, 'Well, this is the Reserve Bank's fault'. I don't think another serious economist in the country … would agree with that …

Warren Hogan said:

We are going backwards in terms of our living standards.

Our productivity is falling, our government is growing, and if this is our new economy, then our standards of living as one of the world's wealthiest countries is going to go away.

…   …   …

Bigger government is not what delivered our modern wealth …

EY chief economist Cherelle Murphy added:

The lack of co-ordination between fiscal and monetary policy means the path to low and stable inflation—and therefore lower interest rates—is slower than it needs to be.

KPMG chief economist Dr Brendan Rynne had this to say:

… the public sector has its foot on the accelerator and the Reserve Bank's foot is on the brake—it's stalling the economy.

In effect, we're in no-man's land.

He said that government spending is 'not sustainable and is effectively taking from Peter to pay Paul'. He also said:

While there's this idea that government spending has saved the economy, what it's effectively done is just move the deck chairs around.

Picking up on what Dr Rynne said, the chatter here in Canberra is that there'll be a May election and an early budget in March. This May, the Treasurer predicted inflation would come back into the RBA's target range of two to three per cent by Christmas. I don't want to scare you, but it's only 105 days till Christmas, and the RBA is only meeting three more times before Christmas under Labor's reduced meeting schedule. My fear is that Labor's pre-election budget will spend, baby, spend because it's all Labor knows how to do.

If you think the Albanese government are clawing at the institutions, economists and other truth-tellers now, wait until inflation isn't back into the target range by Christmas and the RBA hasn't cut rates. The Albanese government have gone past the denial stage of their fiscal grief cycle, and now they are in the anger stage. They are lashing out verbally at truth-tellers and lashing out at the Leader of the Opposition for standing shoulder to shoulder with hardworking Australians who are struggling to make ends meet, and it gets uglier from here. If the Treasurer's Nostradamus predictions on inflation don't come true by Christmas, voters may have some lumps of coal ready for the Treasurer's stocking.

Just like the economists, the numbers don't lie either. Last week, national accounts showed the slowest GDP growth since the 1990s outside the pandemic. Australia has reported its sixth consecutive quarter of negative GDP per person growth, the longest per capita recession in 50 years. In May 2022, the former coalition government left an economy with low unemployment, strong growth and recovering government finances, yet Labor have wasted it. Living standards—real disposable income per capita—have fallen by 8.7 per cent, productivity has collapsed to 6.3 per cent, household savings are down 10.2 per cent, personal income taxes are 25.3 per cent higher, and interest rates paid on mortgages have almost tripled. The economy is experiencing the slowest GDP growth since the 1990s outside the pandemic.

A Peter Dutton led coalition government will get Australia back on track with back-to-basics economic agenda. We will deliver strong economic management that fights inflation and boosts productivity. We are absolutely focused on restoring Australians' way of life. Winning the fight against inflation is the only way to ease the cost-of-living pressures Australians are facing now. The coalition will boost productivity, bringing essential fiscal discipline to bring down inflation and restoring Australia's standard of living. The coalition will get Australia back on track by delivering a back-to-basics economic agenda that includes cutting red tape, securing our energy future, reforming our tax system, restoring sensible workplace laws, encouraging enterprise and small business, and supporting a strong financial sector. That is how we will restore our standard of living and ensure future prosperity.

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