The shadow treasurer has welcomed the RBA's decision to reduce the cash rate to 4.1 per cent, but says 'it's still a long way back' to prosperity.
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00:00It has been a long time coming. It has been a long time coming. We've seen interest rate
00:06cuts in peer countries around the world of between 1 and 2 per cent in countries including
00:10Canada, the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australians have been suffering in the meantime. With
00:17high interest rates and in the course of the last two and a half years or so since interest
00:22rates have been rising, a typical Australian household has paid an extra $50,000, an extra
00:28$50,000 in interest rates than they had expected to pay. And that has been a huge impost of
00:35course on Australian families who have been doing it very, very tough.
00:41Now despite the welcome cut today, it's a long journey back to the standard of living
00:46Australians had when these interest rate increases began. We've seen 12 interest rate increases
00:52under Labor and one down now, but we've also seen the biggest collapse in living standards
00:57in our history. It has been completely unprecedented. It's also been unparalleled relative to other
01:03peer countries around the world. The living standard collapse in Australia has been bigger
01:08than peer countries around the world. And indeed in the forecast today from the Reserve
01:12Bank, there is a downgrade in living standard forecasts. Despite the interest rate cut,
01:18the Reserve Bank is expecting that living standards will be worse than in their previous
01:23forecasts. And this is more pain for Australian families. The journey is far from over here.
01:29The journey is far from over.
01:33Now let me make a critical point about how we've got to where we are. Australian families
01:40have done the hard work here and they deserve this interest rate increase because they're
01:45the ones that have done the work. To get interest rates down, demand has to come into balance
01:50with supply and we've seen rapid growth in public demand, rapid growth in government
01:56spending, but indeed we've seen households tightening their belts. Households have had
02:02to tighten their belts because governments haven't tightened their belts. And the fact
02:08of the matter is households have had to do the work and we see this every day. We see
02:13it in the living standard outcomes that I described a little earlier.
02:18Now Labor's own forecasts, Labor's own forecasts don't get us back to the living standards
02:23that they inherited back when they won the election in 2022. They don't get us back to
02:29those living standards until 2030. With further downgrades today, it's a long way back to
02:36where Australians were when Labor came to power. And we know that the critical issue
02:43now for government is to accelerate that pathway back, accelerate the pathway to restoration
02:51of Australian standard of living that they had when the interest rate increases began.
02:56That means beating inflation once and for all, sustainably beating inflation. It means
03:01making sure government does tighten its belt, that it grows spending at a manageable rate,
03:10not at the rapid rate we've seen in recent times, 36,000 additional Canberra based bureaucrats.
03:16That is not how you sustainably beat inflation. It does mean boosting growth and making sure
03:22there isn't red tape being wrapped around small businesses who are trying to invest
03:26and create jobs, take risks, all the things that businesses have to do to create opportunities
03:30for themselves and for all Australians. It does mean making sure we've got cheaper, more
03:36affordable energy for all Australians, getting the underlying cost of energy down in this
03:41country. And it does mean, of course, making sure that there are affordable homes for Australians,
03:47breaking those infrastructure bottlenecks, as we've outlined with our $5 billion fund,
03:52to make sure those critical bottlenecks that are holding back the supply of housing are
03:57fixed, and we get that supply really moving. We have had a very, very tough two and a half
04:03years for Australian families. Australian families are poorer than they were two and
04:08a half years ago. We cannot afford, we cannot afford another three years like we've seen
04:15over the term of this Parliament.