Michael Sukkar MP

Matter of Public Importance – Labor’s broken promises

I have not seen a performance like that from a Prime Minister. He was lacking in any empathy for the struggles that Australians are feeling under his watch and, indeed, refusing to accept the words that he said before the election. There is one number that will not come out of this Prime Minister’s mouth—it certainly hasn’t left his mouth since the election—and that’s the number 275. But it’s a number that before the election was used a lot by this Prime Minister in a succession of broken promises that we heard from him.

It’s an interesting political tactic: the Prime Minister just stonewalling, time after time, on promises and words that are in transcripts and that were recorded on television and on devices and completely refusing to acknowledge words that he used before the election. We’re seeing a growing list of broken promises. Indeed, we heard yesterday from the Leader of the Opposition the top 10 shameful promises that have not been met by this government. We’ve seen, of course, their promise to bring power bills down by $275. We even had members of the frontbench confirm it in interjections across the dispatch box: ‘Yes, we did promise to reduce power prices by $275, but by 2025.’ Well, I hate to break it to the government, but, with every single year of price rises of over a thousand dollars, that task gets even harder. Does anybody seriously believe that the Prime Minister will be able to deliver $275 power and energy price reductions by 2025?

They promised cheaper mortgages. Every time we ask the Prime Minister if he stands by his position on cheaper mortgages, he disingenuously says: ‘Well, I didn’t want to mislead the Australian people about cheaper mortgages. I was talking about our shared equity plan.’ There’s only one problem: their shared equity plan does not exist. It was supposed to start on 1 January. That’s at least two months ago, and we have not seen this so-called shared equity plan, a very token policy, to date.

We saw that they promised cost-of-living relief. Indeed, all of us will remember the drop to the papers, with the Prime Minister on the front with a supercilious smile, promising these cost-of-living reductions. Does anybody seriously think that the Labor Party ever thought they could deliver on those promises? Does anyone seriously think that the Prime Minister thought he could deliver on these promises? What we see now is a prime minister who wants to entirely divorce himself from speaking about the economy.

It should be no surprise to the Australians watching on television, the Australians throughout our country and, indeed, the Australians visiting our parliament today that a prime minister who, on day one of the election campaign, did not know the cash rate and did not know the unemployment rate—someone who didn’t know those two things—is someone who now sits in a very important chair in this chamber and does not want to speak about the economy. Indeed, he has no understanding or interest in economic matters.

The message to the Prime Minister and his party is: Australians are very concerned. Australians are concerned about the pressures that they’re facing. At 2.30 today, we saw an announcement that the Reserve Bank has increased interest rates again by 0.25 per cent. I’m not sure how that fits into the strategy and the promise around cheaper mortgages from this Prime Minister, but I’ve never seen less empathy come from a leader in this parliament. I’m not just confecting it. I have not seen a prime minister who refuses to empathise with the millions of Australians who now, every single month, when they get the letter or the email from the bank saying, ‘Your mortgage has gone up,’ have to make very binary decisions. Those decisions are: ‘Do I send my child on a school camp? What do I buy from the supermarket? Do I fill up the car, or do I just not drive?’

These are the binary decisions that are being made by Australians, yet we’ve got a prime minister who stands there refusing to even acknowledge that he made those promises. He refuses to acknowledge that those words came out of his mouth. That is an extraordinary insult to the Australian people. My advice for the Prime Minister is: apologise. Australians are very understanding people. Provided you can prove that you didn’t always know that you couldn’t make that promise—and, to be frank, I think there are a couple of promises here that fall into that category—the least he could do is apologise, level with the Australian people and saying: ‘I’m sorry; I cannot deliver that commitment of reducing power prices by $275. I’m sorry; Labor’s inflationary budget and spending has now meant that we can’t deliver cheaper mortgages. I’m sorry that we can’t deliver cost-of-living relief, as we promised before the election.’ But they’re making it up as they go, and the Australian people are the ones who are paying the price.

We also see throughout question time a cavalcade of questions around their big-borrowing and big-spending funds. How many questions have we seen over the last few weeks in relation to their $15 billion reconstruction fund and their $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund? Let me turn to the Housing Australia Future Fund, as the shadow minister for housing used as an example. It will add to borrowing of $10 billion a year. If there’s one message that the Reserve Bank has given the government, it’s: ‘Stop spending.’ Why? It’s because every single billion dollars that the government puts into the economy is a billion dollars that the Reserve Bank has to try to take out in higher interest rates. And so, when we hear question after question lauding the $25 billion of additional borrowing, all we are hearing from the Labor Party is that they are dedicated to pouring fuel on the inflation fire. That’s why what we are suffering in Australia—yes, there are global inflationary impacts—is predominantly Labor inflation. That’s what we are seeing.

We’ve also seen from the government that the Labor Party is obviously ensuring that they don’t bite the hand that feeds them, unleashing the unions onto small businesses throughout this country, creating a less competitive environment for our small businesses. What on earth does the government think that’s going to do for inflation? It is making it more difficult for small businesses to employ people. It is making it more difficult for small businesses that have unique circumstances and now have to deal with the prospect of pattern bargaining. All of that is going to make the job much more difficult for the Reserve Bank and will force them, thanks to the Labor Party, to continue jacking up rates.

We know that the Prime Minister doesn’t face these issues. The Prime Minister talks about it in his latest broken promise, on superannuation, decrying those individuals who have worked hard, abided by the law and followed the rules to provide for their retirement. The Prime Minister’s defined benefit superannuation is conservatively valued at anywhere from $5 million to $10 million. I think that highly shows that he is entirely devoid of understanding the pressures that those people face. The Prime Minister and Treasurer studiously avoided dealing with defined benefits superannuation in their announcement—their broken promise. Again, the Prime Minister was saying: ‘It’s not really a broken promise, because it only affects 0.5 per cent of people. If it only affects a small number of people, even though I said I would not touch superannuation before the election, it actually isn’t a real promise. It’s not a real promise, because it’s 0.5 per cent of people and it’s those nasty people who’ve made a bit of money.’

And then we find out yesterday by happenstance in the Senate that it’s actually 10 per cent of people. And who’s it going to hit the most? It’s going to hit people in their 20s and 30s. They’re the people who are going to be hit. The Treasurer joked, ‘Oh, that’s 30 years away.’ What does the genius think superannuation is? It’s about investments for decades into the future.

We see a succession of broken promises. We don’t see this Prime Minister apologising. We see no empathy. Sadly, it’s the Australian people who are suffering under a Labor government that always gets the big economic calls wrong.