TED O’BRIEN MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR FAIRFAX
MEDIA STATEMENT
The latest ANZ-ROY Morgan Consumer Confidence report shows Australians remain under pressure and their confidence things will get better continues to fall.
Labor’s economic mismanagement is crushing the hopes of Australian families.
The cost of everything has gone up and it’s never coming back down. Productivity has gone backwards by 5% under Labor, and Australians have experienced the sharpest fall in living standards in the developed world.
After 12 interest rate rises under Labor, there have been just three cuts and markets expect rates to settle, indefinitely, at just one to two cuts lower than where they are today. It could very well be “one and done” from here on out.
A further rate cut may be welcomed, but it would still leave mortgage holders paying $1,700 more each month in interest than when the Coalition left office.
This economic catastrophe is being fuelled by Labor’s spending spree. Government spending is growing four times faster than the economy and has reached its highest level outside of recession in 40 years.
And Labor offers Australians no plan for getting us out of this economic rut. All they could think to offer was a talkfest in Canberra that generated zero outcomes of substance and has already disappeared from memory.
All talk and no action from the Albanese Government as usual.
Jim Chalmers’ one big idea was to start taxing the unrealised gains in people’s super accounts, but even that has been left a wreckage after he was forced into a humiliating backdown by the Prime Minister.
The Treasurer’s humiliating backflip on super leaves a $4.2-billion budget blackhole in its wake. And who knows what new taxes Jim Chalmers is cooking up to fill it.
This government’s flip-flopping, their political spin, their failure to deliver on any of their promises, their addiction to spending and their desperate search for new and higher taxes are shattering the confidence of everyday Australians right across the country.
The only way to restore the people’s confidence in our economic future is to restore the Coalition to government at the next election.