ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT- BILLS - Treasury Laws Amendment (Reserve Bank Reforms) Bill 202

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (18:13): I acknowledge the presence of the Greens leader, the member for Melbourne, in the room. I recognise that he's a decent person—although, philosophically, we are absolutely poles apart—but I do worry about the member for Melbourne and the Greens getting any control or say on the Treasury benches after the next election. What we're seeing with this legislation tonight, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reserve Bank Reforms) Bill 2023, is the rub: the Greens are already having a large say on policy, including—worryingly and disturbingly—economic policy. If you read the article by the Sydney Morning Herald's economics analyst, Shane Wright, who is a very good journalist—because I trained him! I'll take some credit for that; I'm sure Shane won't mind. But this article is headed 'Chalmers eyes Greens lifeline for Reserve Bank overhaul', and he writes:

Treasurer Jim Chalmers may drive through the biggest overhaul of the Reserve Bank in a generation with support from the Greens after the Coalition walked away from months of negotiations and concessions aimed at winning bipartisan approval for the changes.

Yes, we did, and the member for Hume took this position for good reason. We've seen the to and fro between Labor and the independent Reserve Bank in recent days and times, and it's worrying.

But let me go back a little bit. I want to acknowledge also the work that Dr Philip Lowe did as the eighth RBA governor. He was deputy governor under Glenn Stevens from February 2012 until he became the governor in his own right in September 2016, and he held that august role until September 2023. He was castigated and derided by regional newspapers for some of the comments he made about inflation. It was difficult at that time to predict what might have happened, particularly coming out of the back of the worst of COVID-19, and Dr Lowe did a very good job. Dr Lowe and I went to school together at St Michael's Regional High School. He also attended Trinity Senior High School in Wagga Wagga.

It's not that I stick up for the likes of Shane Wright and Dr Lowe, but they both have been in Wagga Wagga and they understand regionality. They understand what ordinary, everyday people expect from those in positions of power. Both of them occupy or occupied positions of power, Shane as a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald and Dr Lowe in his position with the RBA. I thought Dr Lowe was unfairly treated by some sections of the media during the latter time he was the RBA governor, and I want to put on the record my thanks to him for his role, for what he did and for appreciating and understanding the very great pressures on regional Australians and what he did during COVID. I think it's important to place those sorts of things on the record.

We are in an inflation crisis at the moment. We are in a crisis of confidence and a cost-of-living crisis. Much of it—some might even argue all of it—has been brought about by Dr Chalmers and by Labor policies.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Wilkie ): I ask the member for Riverina to address the Treasurer by his title.

Mr McCORMACK: Sure—by 'the Treasurer'. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I called him 'Dr Chalmers', because he has got a doctorate, but I take your advice.

I'm reading from the Sydney Morning Herald article:

The Coalition initially supported the move, but in recent months has raised fears Chalmers would "sack and stack" the new committee. It had demanded all members of the current board be moved to the new committee.

Chalmers had agreed to this, but also said he would not move a board member if they preferred to shift to the governance board.

I know that the member for Hume, the shadow Treasurer, has said that the RBA had been undermined by the Treasurer, who last week said high interest rates have smashed the economy, trying to deflect attention from the government's role in the country's inflation. Of course the shadow Treasurer is right in that regard. We previously considered this bill very carefully, but it was agreed that the coalition would continue to engage in good faith with the government. But, unfortunately, the government is now not acting in good faith with either us, the coalition, as the opposition or with the RBA.

You cannot have senior members of government—and journalists don't generally make these things up—describing members of the RBA as nutters or weirdos or barbarians. That is unacceptable, completely unacceptable. In August, the Treasurer wrote to the shadow Treasurer with some proposed amendments. The government's amendments leave open the option for a complete stitch-up of the RBA board. Following this and what I would say are extraordinary interventions of the Treasurer and his surrogates in just the past week, the coalition will not be supporting this bill.

Indeed, this particular legislation implements what the government said that it was going to do with the 2023 RBA review, but it goes too far. What will happen is that we will be seeing more and more intervention by the government into the independence of the RBA. We have a situation where the government has overseen huge increases in inflation, and then we have these incendiary comments by the Treasurer about how the RBA is smashing the economy. Then he was crab-walking back from that in question time, where he repeatedly talked about $1 trillion of Liberal Party debt.

First of all, it's nowhere near $1 trillion. I see the member for Griffith agreeing with me. It's not often that the member for Griffith and I agree, but it's not $1 trillion. It's not more than $1 trillion either, Member for Griffith. It's nowhere near that. It's also not just the Liberal Party that actually did the job during COVID; it was the Liberal and the National parties together. In exchange for the debt that the nation found itself in, we saved tens of thousands of Australian lives at a time when the Chief Medical Officer of this nation, Dr Brendan Murphy, had said that we would lose, if something wasn't done, tens of thousands of Australian lives within weeks, if not months. We acted, and we did everything we could under bizarre, unique circumstances.

The world had not seen a pandemic like this since the end of the First World War. The First World War ended in 1918, and the pandemic of 1919-20 took the lives of many people. COVID-19 threatened to wipe out so many people off the face of this earth, and, indeed, it did. In fact, it killed millions. They were piling up coffins in churches because the morgues were filled in Italy. They were burying people in mass graves on Manhattan Island in the United States of America. They are two countries with good health systems.

We were faced with the prospect of what to do as a nation. We shut the borders. We put in place the National Cabinet; it worked well at the start. We put in place logistics. We put in place methods to get vaccines across the nation and throughout the Pacific. Not only did we save tens of thousands of Australian lives, but we also saved millions of jobs through JobKeeper.

Then we get the Treasurer of Australia standing up and saying, 'Well, what did we get for the trillion dollars worth of Liberal Party debt?' He should stop saying that because it's just not true. What we got was the second-best rating in all of the world from the Johns Hopkins centre, that institute which measured pandemic preparedness and pandemic reaction. We should be very proud of what we did because there are people today alive who would not have been so but for the actions that we took.

But Labor is growing more and more desperate. Attacks on the RBA are as unnecessary as they are unwarranted. Of course, when the Treasurer blames the RBA for 'smashing the economy', we see a very desperate Treasurer almost akin to the naughty schoolboy who didn't do his homework and who, when he comes to class and the teacher asks where the homework is, says, 'Well, the dog ate the homework,' the dog in this instance being the RBA for just doing its job. Michele Bullock is doing her job. She's doing the job she was asked to do and was put in place by this government to do.

What we're seeing is rampant inflation. What we're seeing is an economy that is not supporting business. Each and every day I go into my country communities in the Riverina and the Central West and I see more shops putting up 'Closed' or 'Closing down' signs in their windows. We see more and more people sleeping in their cars. We see tents appearing in places where people simply cannot afford either rent or their own home or other accommodation. What we're getting is a Treasurer blaming the Reserve Bank governor and the Reserve Bank board and then wanting to change the rules so that the government can sack the said board and do a complete job on the Reserve Bank board. This is just unheard of and unparalleled.

Then what we find is that the government wants to do a deal with the Greens, and here they are—the economic strategists of the nation.

Mr Chandler-Mather: Put us in charge.

Mr McCORMACK: 'Put us in charge'? My goodness! Hopefully not, Member for Griffith. It is a worry. Let me tell you: if the Greens have any say on the treasury bench then this nation is headed for far worse inflation figures and cost-of-living pressures that we have now.

So the coalition will not be supporting this bill. Labor's growing desperation is becoming more and more evident as time goes on. I know we have MYEFO, the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, coming up. I know we potentially have another budget prior to the next election, but who would know? Only the Prime Minister knows when he's going to go out to Yarralumla and hand in his commission. But, when he does do that, let's just hope that at the next election we don't see a minority government in conjunction with the Greens, because at the moment we have gas up 33 per cent and electricity up 14 per cent even after the taxpayer funded rebates of $300. I thought it was going to be $275, as was promised prior to the last election, but, of course, even though that was promised on almost 100 occasions, nothing was further from the truth. Rents are up 16 per cent. I know the member for Griffith had a lot to say about that and his solution to it, but I don't think he needs to be listened to either, because the Greens have done more to hold up local government development applications than anything, and that is causing a huge problem in local councils and states, who are most responsible—let's face it—at the end of the day for housing and the like. Health costs are up 11 per cent, education costs are up 11 per cent and food prices are up 12 per cent. All these costs add—it goes on and on and on—to people's mortgages and household bills. Financial and insurance costs are up 17 per cent.

Honourable members interjecting—

Mr McCORMACK:   I can hear the Greens yelling out. Rest assured that, if they get hold of the treasury bench, we are all in trouble—not just us here on Capital Hill but ordinary everyday mums and dads throughout Australia, families and businesses struggling to pay bills now.

This bill is not good. This bill will not be supported by the coalition. We should have an independent RBA. This doesn't give us that.