Increased inflation, declining productivity and cost-of-living crises for Australians

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell—Manager of Opposition Business) (10:18): I rise with great concern over the recent fuel and oil shocks that are causing an increase in inflation and cost-of-living crises for Australians. What is most important for Australia to remember is that we can only control what is inside our control as a country, not be blown about by things that are happening overseas. Yes, we have a war in Iran. Yes, we have a war in Ukraine. Yes, we now have an oil shock and a fuel crisis. But the consequences of the government abandoning the productivity challenge—from the day they got re-elected, they said productivity was their first concern—and giving it up so easily has ongoing effects for our economy.

Have a think about Trevor in West Pennant Hills in my electorate, who emailed me and said his year-on-year electricity bill that he just got just went up 33 per cent. Have a think about all the small businesses in my electorate who tell me now that to get something off the docks—off the waterfront—for import exposed businesses is now a three-month wait. Now, I've contacted the minister, and his staff are very helpful. My former agencies in Home Affairs have very helpful people. But our lack of productivity on the waterfront means that these businesses have faced three-month waits, and that's still not the resolution. They don't know if they will have their goods off the docks after three months.

Declining productivity in Australia means directly that, for each of those small businesses and services affected in my electorate—three of them have contacted me just this month, desperate to get those supplies off the waterfront—their viability is under severe threat. And nobody treats that like a crisis. When we have the world's highest wages and we have people on the waterfront increasing wages constantly, we have no link to productivity. Why can't we demand more productivity from our waterfront? Why can't we get those things out of the cargo containers and to the businesses so they can keep their businesses going? No-one answers that. That's not a crisis. We're dealing with other crises. Well, I can tell you that freefall declining productivity over time is the biggest economic crisis we face, because the cost of everything is going up.

For God's sake, rents are unaffordable for ordinary people. Beer is unaffordable. Let's have a look at that. Historically speaking, beer is one of the cheapest staples in world history. It is now almost unaffordable for Australians. We talk about it here in pubs and we've heard members here talking about pubs. Well, beer is virtually unaffordable for the average Australian right now. This is freefall declining productivity. The Treasurer said it was his No. 1 challenge and then he dropped it like a lead balloon within five minutes. We haven't heard this government speak about productivity since. I give this example of my constituents struggling directly. They're genuine, great, import-exposed small businesses. They cannot get their products off the docks. Everyone's trying to help, but no-one's doing anything about the problems with productivity. We must be able to do better as a country, or our prices and our inflation will continue to increase the cost of all basic goods and services, which is a disaster for our economy.