Anthony Albanese can’t help himself.

He tells the Australian people one thing while knowing full well that what he is saying is not the truth.

Take his latest fraud on the Australian people in regard to credit card surcharges.

The Prime Minister stood in front of the cameras and told Australians that banning surcharges would save them money every time they tap.

But on day one, businesses are already warning that prices will rise.

Nobody likes card surcharges.

Nobody enjoys getting to the end of a meal or a coffee and finding a little extra tacked onto the bill.

But Anthony Albanese wants you to believe a cost disappears just because you can no longer see it on the receipt.

Australians aren’t mugs.

Think about your local cafe. Every time you tap your card, that cafe pays to process the payment.

That cost is real, and banning the surcharge doesn’t make it go away.

If it isn’t on the receipt, the owner has two choices: absorb it or build it into the price of everything on the menu.

So you’ll still pay it. You just won’t be able to see it.

We have always said the right approach is to drive down the underlying cost of payments and give consumers clear, honest prices.

Shifting costs around the economy and pretending they’ve disappeared doesn’t make a single family better off.

Anthony Albanese keeps confusing hiding costs with lowering costs. After four years of a cost-of-living crisis, Australians know the difference.

And while Labor is telling small businesses to swallow their card-processing costs, the Australian Taxation Office has decided it will stop accepting credit cards altogether.

You couldn’t make it up.

Labor can’t help itself. Every day it finds another way to make life harder for small businesses and for Australians who are trying to get ahead.

Labor seems compelled to punish anyone who works hard, takes a risk or tries to build something.

Every day brings another tax, another regulation and another burden on small business.

Small and family businesses are already under enormous cash-flow pressure. For many of them, a credit card is not a luxury.

It is a short-term cash-flow tool that helps them meet their BAS, PAYG and other tax obligations while they wait for their own customers to pay them.

That isn’t just me saying it. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s latest survey found rising costs and cash flow are among the worsening pressures facing small business.

There is also an obvious question of consistency. Small businesses are being told to absorb card-processing costs instead of passing them on to customers. Yet the government’s own tax office won’t absorb its own credit card costs. It is simply refusing to take the cards.

It’s one rule for small business and another rule for Labor.

The Prime Minister should reverse this decision today.

If Anthony Albanese really wants to bring prices down, he should start with the biggest cost Australians face right now: a government that has lost control of spending, inflation and the economy.

Australians were already doing it tough. This week’s interest rate rise is another painful hit to household budgets and to small businesses that are already stretched to the limit.

Life isn’t easy under Albanese. We’ve had a cost-of-living crisis and the largest decline in living standards in the developed world.

Now we have the highest interest rates in 15 years, at 4.60 per cent, which is higher than the major advanced economies.

On top of that, inflation rose from 3.5 per cent to 4 per cent in August. That’s higher than any major advanced economy.

It is clear this government has lost control of the economy and the budget.

Families have tightened their belts. Anthony Albanese hasn’t. Even NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns has called it out.

Had Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers lived within their means, as Australian households and businesses have been forced to, the Budget would have been $22 billion in surplus in the most recent final budget outcome. Interest rates could be the equivalent of seven rate cuts lower today, without adding to inflation.

Seven rate cuts. Imagine what that would mean for your mortgage, your rent or your business.

This isn’t just the Coalition’s view. Former Reserve Bank Governor Phil Lowe put it plainly:

“Now we find ourselves running sizeable budget deficits at a time where we're at full employment and commodity prices are very high. We should be running sizeable surpluses.’’

Instead, the Reserve Bank has been forced to act because inflation is still too high and the government has lost control.

Outside the pandemic, government spending is running at a 40-year high. Debt is more than a trillion dollars.

You cannot keep spending more, taxing more and driving up costs, then pretend inflation and interest rates have nothing to do with you.

Remember when Labor told Australians inflation was beaten? Jim Chalmers said the worst of the inflation challenge was “well and truly behind us’’.

Australians will hear those words very differently today.

Someone with the average new mortgage would now pay $31,000 more in interest than when Labor came to office. That is $31,000 ripped out of the family budget every year.

And that comes on top of power, insurance, health and education costs that keep going up.

Under Labor, the cost of everything is up:

• Gas: up 44 per cent

• Insurance: up 43 per cent

• Rent: up 24 per cent

• Housing: up 24 per cent

• Education: up 23 per cent

• Health: up 20 per cent

  
  

Australians are working harder and going backwards.

Fixing the cost-of-living crisis starts with fixing the economy.

Our Plan to Fix the Economy and Protect Our Way of Life means Lower Taxes, Cheaper Power, Less Migration and More Homes.

We will axe Labor’s toxic taxes on housing, investment and small and family businesses. We will fight bracket creep, get debt under control, link migration to housing supply and put Australians first.

And we will put a speed limit on spending, so no government can spend faster than the economy is growing.

People often ask me where the savings will come from. We will axe Labor’s climate bureaucracy, its housing bureaucracy, its corporate welfare and its welfare for non-citizens.

We will release our full costings before the next election, once we have outlined all our policies and know the true state of the books. If there is one thing we have learnt about this government, it’s that it is either cooking the books or not being upfront with Australians about them.

There’s the $7 billion black hole in the refugee and humanitarian intake. There’s a monster $83 billion black hole in the Intergenerational Report that the government still hasn't explained.

Australians deserve better than spin. They deserve a government that tells them the truth about what things cost, and then does something about it.

Lower taxes. Cheaper power. Less migration. More homes.

That is how we get Australia back on track. That is how we fix our economy and protect our way of life.