Topics: Inflation data; Labor’s economic mismanagement; cost of living crisis; interest rates; high speed rail link project 

  

E&OE    

 

JO VAN DER PLAAT, LIBERAL CANDIDATE FOR EDEN-MONARO:  

Good afternoon. I'm Jo van der Plaat the Liberal Candidate for Eden-Monaro. I've lived in Eden-Monaro for the last 30 years, and for the last 20 of them, I've raised a family, I've run a local legal practice, and I've volunteered extensively. Look, the pain that is being felt by small business and families for the last two and a half years is certainly pain that I feel as well as a small business owner and a wife and mother. Today's inflation data, for me, is not just numbers on a page. It means something to the people that live in Eden-Monaro and from the many local conversations that I've had over the last 12 months, I can tell you that today's inflation data means continued reliance on community pantries and Vinnie's food vouchers. It means delaying or not even going to the doctors. It means thinking about what you put in your trolley when you go to Woolies or Aldi. It means for small business, some of them will really need to be thinking about whether or not they shut their doors or stop employing local staff. For me, I think small business and households are really suffering in Eden-Monaro and I can tell you that the message, the very clear message that is being sent to me when I speak to locals is that Labor does not know how to manage budgets. As a family and households and small business, it's our responsibility to manage budgets. Labor is not doing that. And the clear message that is being sent to me in Eden-Monaro is that it's time for a change, and it's time to get Eden-Monaro back on track. With that, I'll pass to Angus. 

  

ANGUS TAYLOR: 

Well, great to be here with Jo and she of course, is fighting hard as a candidate for Eden-Monaro. She understands the region well. She understands the concerns that people have right across this region, whether it's Goulburn or Cooma or Queanbeyan or Bega. I know that Jo is out there every single day and fighting hard for the people of Eden-Monaro and understanding most importantly, the issues and what needs to happen to get this country in this region back on track. Now, we've just seen the monthly inflation data out a few minutes ago, about an hour and a half or so ago, and the truth of the matter is, what these numbers show us is that this government is more interested in hiding inflation than in fighting inflation. This government is more interested in hiding inflation than fighting inflation. If you look at the individual numbers, headline inflation is up for the month. [inaudible]. Core inflation is stubbornly above 3%, well above where we need it to be, and services inflation, indeed, critical services inflation, is above 4%. And all of this tells us that the government's been playing games. It's seeking to hide inflation, but we know underlying inflation is not where it needs to be. Now you don't need to tell any Australians that. They know it. They see it in the bank account. They see it when they go to the checkout. They see it when they have to pay their bills. They are suffering, and we know they're making tough decisions at a time like this, whether it's the decision to dig deep into their savings to pay for those essentials, whether it's working extra hours or taking on, indeed, a second job in many cases. Whether it's cutting back on those things that they've become used to and that their families expected. And we know, we know there is not light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon. We know that because on the government's own numbers that were put out just before Christmas, very quietly, so people wouldn't take any notice of it – we saw from those numbers that we're not going to see Australian's standard of living get back to where it was when Labor came to power until 2030 at the earliest. This is an absolutely desperate situation.  

 

Critical in the numbers today is also that prices are going up, not down, and there's no expectation of that changing. They'll continue to go up. And indeed, since Labor came to power, it's worth highlighting this, we've seen the cost of food go up by over 12% over 12%. Rents up over 16%, gas up over 36%, health over 10% and so on. The list goes on. All of those cost pressures continue to be there, and there's no expectation the prices are going anywhere but up from here.  

 

Now, Australia is absolutely the back of the pack in dealing with this. We know our core inflation is right at the back of where we want it to be, compared to peer countries across the world. It's higher than most of our peers right across the world. And the result of that is we're not seeing the interest rate cuts that we have seen in the United States, in Europe, in the UK, in Canada and elsewhere across our peer countries, they've seen interest rate cuts. We haven't seen them because our inflation remains stubbornly high.  

 

Now the truth is, sitting underneath all of this is we have a Prime Minister who is more interested in fighting Peter Dutton and fighting journalists than he is in fighting inflation. More interested in fighting Peter Dutton and journalists than he is in fighting inflation. He's got more nasty things to say about journalists and Peter Dutton than he has to say about how he's going to beat inflation, and we know that because he's failed completely to beat this inflation blight that is on this country and the pain that so many Australians are feeling. We need a country where we're getting back on track, back in the right direction, and that means getting back to basics, putting in place the fiscal rules that have been in place for so long to bring inflation down in past episodes. Making sure that we take red tape out of the way of small businesses like the one we've just visited here in Goulburn. Making sure that we've got critical sectors like the construction sector, like the energy sector, like the financial services sector, free of the red tape that's constraining them to do what they need to do to make sure we've got a strong economy and we've got rising disposable incomes, a rising standard of living. There is a better way, but we're not going to see it from this government. Indeed, it looks more and more day on day like this is a Prime Minister who wouldn't know what to do if he got three more years of government. We can't afford another three years of Labor. Happy to take questions. 

  

JOURNALIST:   

Angus, Rob Scott here from Seven News. The bond markets now say there's a 77% chance for a rate cut in February. What do you think that'll do to the Coalition's chances of being elected the next election? 

  

ANGUS TAYLOR:  

Well, Rob, I'm not going to get into forecasting interest rates. The one thing I would say is that we're absolutely at the back of the pack in fighting and beating inflation, and the result of that is that we're at the back of the pack in terms of interest rate cuts. We've seen interest rate cuts, as I said earlier, across countries, right across the world, Canada, the US, UK, Europe, not here in Australia. Not here in Australia. I'm not going to tell the Reserve Bank how to do its job, but I am going to say that the government can do a lot more to take pressure off inflation. Inflation remains stubbornly above the target range, inflation remains stubbornly above where we need it to be to see the big improvement in our standard of living we all want to see. And the result of that is clear when I speak to businesses, when I speak to people right across this part of the world and right across Australia. 

  

JOURNALIST:   

How much do you think you could reduce interest rates by? 

  

ANGUS TAYLOR:  

Well, I mean, they need to be lower and we've seen how much lower they're getting, they're coming down in other countries. We've seen cuts in countries right across the world, the US, the UK, Canada, Europe. That's what we should be seeing here in Australia. And I think it's pretty straightforward. We are at the back of the pack here. Australia is not faring well. We've seen the biggest drop in our standard of living in this country of any of our OECD peers. It's unparalleled. It's also unprecedented. We've never seen a hit to our standard of living like we've seen here in Australia. And the most tragic part of this is that this government's own plan, its own plan, if you want to call it that, says that we're not going to see your resumption of our standard of living of where it was when they came to power, until 2030 at the earliest. That's their own numbers. It's a diabolical state of affairs, and this Prime Minister has no answers.  

  

JOURNALIST:   

The trend is in the right direction, the numbers are going in the right direction, even though they are not going in a straight line.   

  

ANGUS TAYLOR:  

Well, Rob, I just say again, headline inflation went up today, not down, and core inflation is stubbornly above the target range. I mean look, this is a government that keeps telling us it's going to get better, and we don't see it. Australians aren't seeing it in their bank accounts. Small businesses aren't seeing it in how they're going. I was just talking to a local real estate agent here just a moment ago, whose revenues have fallen off a cliff over the last couple of years, absolutely fallen off a cliff. I mean, this is disastrous, and we're seeing record levels of insolvencies. We've never seen a level of insolvencies like we're seeing right now in Australia, and it's set to continue until we see a government that takes seriously the things you have to take seriously to get back to basics and get back on track. 

  

JOURNALIST:   

You mentioned that headline inflation is up, but it's within the Reserve Bank's target range. The trend for the trimmed mean is coming down. Is it a case of it just not coming down fast enough? Or is potentially the economy is heading in the wrong direction? 

  

ANGUS TAYLOR:  

It's exactly where it was a couple of months ago, of course Charles, as you would know. And that's, of course, the number that the Reserve Bank looks at, and it's outside the range. It's above where it needs to be. So there's no ambiguity about that. And you know, we continue to see it as we talk to small businesses and others right across the country, we continue to see these cost pressures. We continue to see it in other data that was put out today, the vacancy rate data, for instance. Those cost pressures are not going away. Those cost pressures are still there, and prices continue to go up. I mean, if you listen to this government, you'd believe, if you really believed them, you'd think that everyone was flush and things were going great. Well, it's just not true. Australians are really struggling right now, and we're a long way from where we need to be if we're going to see the interest rate cuts and, most importantly, the improvement in the standard of living that Australians want. We're well behind where we were when Labor came to power. Our standard of living is substantially lower than it was back then, and sadly, there's no pathway back to where we should be until 2030, or later.  

  

JOURNALIST:   

Do you think interest rates are going to be - [INAUDIBLE] 

  

ANGUS TAYLOR:   

Well, the sad truth is that prices keep going up. And this is the thing you think from listening to the government that prices and inflation are the same thing. They're not. Prices continue to go up for Australians, and they continue to pay that price in the supermarket when they pay their bills, when they pay for their electricity, for the gas, you know, and this government's answer always is a band aid on a bullet wound. So look, we do want to see, we do want to see prices coming down, or inflation coming down, and the cost of living improving over the coming months. Our hope is that that happens. That's what we want to see. But sadly, we've got a government that hasn't been taking the right actions. The government has clearly been taking this country in the wrong direction. It's had its priorities elsewhere, and as I say, this is a Prime Minister, who’s more interested in fighting journalists than he is in fighting inflation. We've seen that even in the last couple of days. You would think he'd have come out in the New Year fresh and rearing to go. Instead, he's up there bickering with journalists, bickering about Peter Dutton. I mean, this is not how a Prime Minister should behave if he's focused on the right things, which is getting us back to where we should be. Well, that's about all they've got to say, because things are terrible under Labor. I mean, honestly, this is ... it's desperate stuff, isn't it? It really is desperate stuff from this Prime Minister and this Treasurer. They say, look, things are terrible, things are awful but you know what we're going to talk about, Peter Dutton. I mean, it's extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, they could spend their time instead of talking about Peter Dutton or bickering with journalists, they could spend that time talking about what we need as a country to get back on track, to get going in the right direction and we know what those things are. We know what those things are. It does mean making sure the government is managing its budgets, just like every single household is having to manage their budgets. It does mean freeing up critical industries and small business to invest and grow and take risks and employ people. I mean, this is the basic stuff. It's not new. It's not rocket science. But we know that's what's needed. The Prime Minister wants to talk about all sorts of other things.  

  

JOURNALIST:   

The Treasurer and Prime Minister say things would be worse under Peter Dutton. [INAUDIBLE]  

 

ANGUS TAYLOR: 

Well, we've already seen the government spend half a billion dollars on this, and all we've got is a shop front and a few holes in the ground, and no doubt they'll continue to spend money on this without getting serious about laying out what it would cost and what a business plan would really look like. It's very hard for me to comment without seeing their business plan, and we certainly haven't seen it. And they should, if they're serious about this, they should bring it forward. 

  

JOURNALIST:   

You mention prices going up. You were in a coffee shop today, how much did a coffee set you back? Did you buy one? 

  

ANGUS TAYLOR:   

Yeah, I was very kindly given one by the owner, which was very nice of him, although I'm a regular customer there, and I buy coffees there regularly, and it's $4.75 so they're not ... they're not cheap anywhere. We're all paying more for our coffee and we had a long talk about the cost of coffee beans, which is going up. The cost of everything has been going up and he, like every other small business person has been paying the price for that. So actually, now that I think about it, I didn't have a coffee there. I had a coffee beforehand from elsewhere. So but, but $4.75, was the price there, and we're all paying a lot more for our coffee than we were a couple of years ago.  

 

ENDS.