ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE - Economy

Whether it's households, whether it's farms, whether it's factories, whether it's small businesses, right across society Australians are worse off now than what they were prior to the election in May 2022 with the Albanese government. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition and member for Farrer asked a very good question in question time today when she queried the Prime Minister about the record number of Australian business insolvencies of any month ever. There are 1,364 businesses going up the spout. Since this Prime Minister took office, more than 24,700 Australian businesses have gone insolvent. The Prime Minister disputed those figures, even though they were the Australian Securities and Investment Commission's figures, even though they were the official statistics.

We have a government that is promising to build 1.2 million Australian homes. Amongst those insolvencies, the second-highest sector is the construction industry. If you look at the figures—and this again is ASIC data—for construction companies going insolvent, and these are for the first time a company enters external administration or has a controller appointed, in 2021-22 there are 1,284. In the following year, there were 2,213, and then there were 2,977 for the financial year 2023-24. Those figures come on the back of Labor saying that they're going to build 1.2 million Australian homes, come on the back of the Victorian government trying to shut down the timber industry, coming on the back of the Victorian government, where the member for Jagajaga lives, telling new homeowners that they can't put gas appliances in their homes. How, in goodness's name, are we going to get that number of houses built?

They did a cosy little deal yesterday with the Greens. Love is back in the air when it comes to Labor and the Greens. The romance never really browned off. They just—

Ms McBain: Wrong.

Mr McCORMACK: No, it's not wrong at all, Member for Eden-Monaro. It was always there. They just feigned: 'Let's have this little lovers' tiff so that everybody thinks we're not together anymore, but you know what? We'll still accept your preferences and, just in the death throes of the parliamentary sitting schedule, we'll reunite. We'll get back into bed.' That's exactly what happened yesterday: Labor and the Greens back in cahoots.

Ms McBain: Liberal preferences.

Mr McCORMACK: Yes, I hear 'preferences' from the member for Eden-Monaro, the regional development minister. That is so true. It's all about preferences, because that is how Labor will get back in. Rest assured: if we are in a minority government situation after the next election, the figures on insolvencies, energy costs, grocery prices and bowser costs for everybody who ever goes to fill up their car, their ute, their truck, their motorbike or whatever are going to be up and up and up. Let me tell you: if the Labor government is going to be led by the nose by the Greens political party then we are all in trouble, because the Greens don't just have an environmental agenda. That'd be fine if they did, but they have an economic agenda to dismantle the traditions of this nation. That's before they even start on social norms and fixing up everything they think is wrong with society.

But don't just take my word for it on the construction side. Look at CreditorWatch chief economist Ivan Colhoun, who said:

On the construction side, interest rates do reduce construction, and there's the well-publicised cost pressure that businesses in the building industry have faced for a number of years now.

Construction had the second-highest business failure rate, with a 12-month average of 5.3 per cent, and it is a terrible indictment on this government that hospitality and construction have the largest number of businesses with debts to the tax office and the largest number of businesses failing. That leads to pressures on households, which are already crippled with debt, are already wondering how they're going to put Christmas presents under the tree for the kids come 25 December and are under pressure because of this government, which in its first few months did nothing but worry about a divisive referendum that failed. They didn't look at cost-of-living pressures at all.