General News
10 July, 2024
Finding a way to net-zero with creating more pain
By ANNE WEBSTER I ALWAYS enjoy visiting the Loddon Shire as I did with mobile offices in Pyramid Hill and Boort. All over the electorate of Mallee, Victoria’s largest electorate at 83,500 km2 covering north-west Victoria, my constituents are...
By ANNE WEBSTER
I ALWAYS enjoy visiting the Loddon Shire as I did with mobile offices in Pyramid Hill and Boort. All over the electorate of Mallee, Victoria’s largest electorate at 83,500 km2 covering north-west Victoria, my constituents are raising similar issues, though the concern about the reckless rollout of renewables and transmission lines in Loddon Shire looms large. I will come back to that in a moment.
Cost of living is an overwhelming concern for Loddon residents and let me give you a report card on Australia after just two years of an Albanese Labor government.
The price of electricity is up 20 per cent, gas up 25 per cent, food costs are up 11 per cent, housing and rent costs up 13 per cent, health and education costs up 11 per cent and insurance costs up 16 per cent.
The real disposable income of households has fallen 7.8 per cent, while household savings have plummeted to 0.9 percentage points, compared with 9.9 when the Coalition Government left office. Australians are paying 20 per cent more tax under Labor, so the tax cuts coming from 1 July – which the Coalition supported – make little difference without reforming the income tax brackets. ‘Bracket creep’ (as salaries rise) will take $60 billion from household budgets over forward estimates, giving the Albanese government plenty of revenue to pretend it is charitably giving you money – it is your money, handed back to you, all while Labor fails to rein in government debt. Additional government spending alone is running to $315 billion, or $30,000 per household. For every dollar of revenue, Labor is spending $4.
Interest payments on mortgages have risen 30.8 per cent in the last reporting year alone, and have almost tripled since the last election. Under Labor, interest rates have risen 12 times compared with once, just before the May election, under the Coalition. In fact, the Reserve Bank cut rates nine times while the Coalition was in government.
Responsible economic management is at the core of Liberal-National Coalition, but we are paying the price for inflationary spending behaviour by the Albanese Labor government. In just two years, our Gross Domestic Product has seen its weakest annual growth rate since 1991 outside of the pandemic years. We have seen five consecutive quarters of a per capita recession, that is, our output per person has been going backwards since early 2023. Productivity has collapsed, down 5.2 per cent under Labor and their paybacks to their union masters in the form of radical industrial relations changes will only send productivity further backwards.
Little wonder that, tragically, insolvencies in manufacturing are up threefold in this country over the last two years. As I said earlier, energy costs are up 20 per cent and Labor’s one-off $300 across four quarterly payments for households, and $325 for small businesses, are not the permanent $275 energy bill reduction Labor promised at the May 2022 election. In fact, power prices are up about $1,000 for households and far more for the struggling small businesses in Mallee.
In Loddon and adjacent shires the outrage over the mishandling and behaviour of the Victorian government VNI West transmission line proponents is a dominant topic. Farmers and community members are working with me on making their voice heard, because that is my number one priority as your federal member for Mallee.
Federal and Victorian Labor Governments are accelerating their railroading of communities, setting aside community or even environmental concerns to foist energy transmission line and generation projects on Loddon residents.
The Coalition have been calling out Labor’s false narrative on renewables and clear failure to reach their targets, and we will take a sensible approach to a net zero energy grid by 2050 that does not add to the cost-of-living pain of hard-working Australians.
* Dr Webster is the federal member for Mallee