I’ll give you some real action. Let’s get that on the table. That’s a bit of fun. Let’s do that. Let’s have real action. The lowest unemployment in 50 years—we delivered that real action. We did that. The lowest welfare dependency in 30 years—we did that too. Small businesses—you opposite talk about middle Australia, and this is what they own. You can introduce yourself to them later on and find out about them. They’re great people, so get out there and meet them. We had the lowest small business tax rate in 30 years. We dropped it from 30 to 25 per cent. That’s real action. I’m pretty happy to put that on the table.
We started off today with a bit of Monty Python. I thought that was fantastic. The member for Fenner gave a very entertaining speech. I’m not going to go the full monty—there’s my contribution to these puns. We did have a very Monty Pythonesque performance today once again from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. He was trying to convince Australians that their power bills have gone down and they’re paying less for their energy. It’s the sort of humour that is really hard to enjoy if you’re on the receiving end, but I’m sure it seems quite humorous to those on the frontbenches. In my electorate, according to AGL today, average annual prices for energy in regional Australia, and particularly around Groom, will increase by $432 next year, taking them up to around $1,900. Now, we gave the government the opportunity, pretty recently, to name a single Australian who’s had their energy bills go down. Just name one. They could not do that. They absolutely could not do that. We know what’s happening with energy prices. They’ve gone up.
I think the excellent member for Fraser, my good friend, nailed it when he was talking about the last election. It was a question of trust. There was a question of trust put, and that’s what a good election should be based on. When the now Prime Minister promised Australians cheaper mortgages, they trusted him. They knew that was an issue. When the now Prime Minister promised lower energy prices, they trusted him. They were feeling that pain, they knew it was coming through, and they trusted him. On real wages, on grocery prices—I have the now Treasurer saying there’s lots we can do to reduce cost of living, including reducing grocery prices. People trusted the then opposition, now government, when they said these things. They trusted them. And one after another those promises have been broken. That trust has been eroded.
The shadow Treasurer stood up and asked, ‘Do you feel better off today than you did a year ago?’ I don’t think he means just financially. I don’t think he means just economically. Yes, there’s the impact on your lifestyle, on your ability to look after your kids and pay your mortgage, but I think it’s also how you feel about the decision you made once you see those broken promises, one after the other, land on you. And then you sit here and watch a minister try to pretend that prices have gone down.
Going to the core of this question on inflation, we have one of the highest rates of core inflation amongst major economies. It’s higher than the US, the UK, Canada and the Euro area. And whilst it’s very true that the significant driving international forces pushed our inflation up and put us in the situation we’re in, there are different ways to respond to it. Different countries have taken different responses and they’ve got different results. That’s the role of government. You face the challenges that you have. And this is the question of monetary and fiscal policy: what role do they play? Do you just allow monetary policy from the RBA to whack that giant sledgehammer of interest rates down on those who hold debt and allow them to hurt more and more and more with each whack—and I note that sledgehammer, after this budget, has not been taken away. In fact, across the commentary of economists, there has been no suggestion that this has brought about an end to interest rate rises. This has done nothing to help monetary policy whatsoever. The idea of fiscal policy working with monetary policy has been abandoned by this government. That’s how you get these different results across different nations. So when we come to speak about this government’s actions and what it’s done, let’s be very clear: it’s brought about a budget that has confirmed mortgages will keep going up, 175,000 people will lose their jobs and things are going to get a lot worse.
