Labor's Economic Storm Clouds Darken

As Parliament rose for the year, Australians were left with one stark message: under Labor, the economic storm clouds are only getting darker.

Inflation is back up to an extraordinary 3.8% - above market expectations and well above the RBA’s forecasts. Both headline and underlying inflation are now back above the RBA’s target band.

With just 17 days until Christmas, this is the worst possible news for struggling mortgage holders, who can now kiss any hope of extra rate relief goodbye. Families who were already cutting back on Christmas presents, holidays and even basics like food and fuel are now being told to brace for more pain.

Labor has presided over the biggest collapse in living standards in the developed world while fuelling an addiction to spending that is driving up the cost of living today and leaving a $1.2 trillion debt bomb for the next generation.

This is what it means for you, your family and for younger Australians.

Under Labor, Australians are going backwards.

• We have seen the largest decline in living standards in the developed world.

• Mortgages are up by around $1,800 a month after 12 rate rises.

• Because of Labor’s economic vandalism, households are paying:

  • 15% more for food

  • 15% more for health

  • 19% more for housing

  • 37% more for insurance

  • Nearly 40% more for electricity

  
  

Australians are left with less and less in their pocket every single week. Anglicare reports that a full-time minimum wage worker has just $33 left after paying essentials.

That is not a cost-of-living crisis - it is a cost-of-survival crisis.

Instead of tightening their own belt, Labor has opened the spending floodgates.

• Government spending has blown out from 24% to 27% of GDP - the highest level outside a recession in nearly 40 years.

• Debt is climbing to $1.2 trillion by the next election.

• Former RBA Governor Philip Lowe has made it clear that inflation lasted longer in Australia because of Labor’s spending spree.

Rather than getting their own house in order, Labor’s answer is always the same: higher taxes on superannuation, on savings, on housing and on family businesses. 

And every minute of every day, Australians are paying the price.

Right now, every minute we are paying around $50,000 just on interest on Labor’s debt.

Every dollar that goes to interest is a dollar that cannot be spent on:

• Medicare

• Schools

• Hospitals

• The safety net

• Or tax relief for families and small businesses

This is the real-world cost of Labor’s addiction to spending. 

We cannot keep putting unsustainable spending on the national credit card and expecting our kids and grandkids to pay it back tomorrow through higher taxes.

At the heart of this debate is intergenerational fairness.

The bottom line is simple: we do not believe Gen Z and Millennials should be forced to pay back an out-of-control Labor debt.

Young Australians are already locked out of housing, hit with soaring rents and confronted with rising taxes and charges. They should not also inherit a trillion-dollar bill for Labor’s waste and mismanagement.

Our philosophy is very different to Labor’s.

We believe in:

• Living within our means and controlling spending -  Government should set the example, not keep reaching into your pocket.

• Reward for effort with lower taxes - Australians who work hard, save and invest should be encouraged, not punished.

• Targeting welfare to genuine need - so we can properly fund the essential services Australians rely on.

• Restoring fiscal discipline to pay back the debt  - so we are prepared for the next crisis, instead of lurching from one emergency to another.
  

That is the choice:

• A Labor Government that spends big now and sends the bill to the next generation; or

• A Liberal approach that focuses on living within our means, rewarding effort and protecting younger Australians from being saddled with a trillion-dollar debt.

  
  

And the economic damage is only part of Labor’s story.

On national security and community safety, the pattern from the Albanese Government is the same: secrecy, spin and broken trust.

The clearest example is the growing scandal over the ISIS brides.

On a matter that goes to the heart of national security and community safety, the Prime Minister and his Home Affairs Minister have spent months telling Australians one story in public, while documents, meeting notes and media reports reveal something very different behind closed doors.

This is not a slip of the tongue; it looks like a deliberate strategy of concealment: secret meetings, officials removed from the room, word games about “repatriation” and “assistance”, and a refusal to level with the Australian people.

We should also be clear about who this cohort is. 

These are not backpackers stranded overseas. They are the wives of ISIS terrorists - Australian women who travelled to, or chose to remain in, territory controlled by Islamic State, living under the black flag of a terrorist death cult responsible for beheadings, mass murder, sex slavery and genocide.

Some may now say they were tricked or regret their choices. But as a group they are people who aligned themselves with one of the most barbaric terrorist organisations in modern history. Australians are therefore entitled to insist that any government involvement in their return is handled with maximum transparency, maximum candour and maximum caution: not spin and secrecy.

Yet from day one, the Albanese Government has insisted there has been “no repatriation and no assistance”, just routine “legal” obligations when citizens present at an embassy.

They have told Australians they are “not providing assistance to this cohort” and that there are no covert repatriation operations.

The facts say otherwise.

Six people linked to ISIS fighters - two women and four children - returned to Australia on 26 September. These “ISIS brides” and their children smuggled themselves out of the Al-Hawl camp, travelled hundreds of kilometres to Lebanon, were detained trying to cross the border, and then turned up at the Australian embassy in Beirut. From that point on, the Australian Government conducted identity and security checks, processed citizenship by descent for Syria-born children, issued passports and travel documents, and facilitated their return on a commercial flight to Melbourne.

To look Australians in the eye and describe that as “no assistance” and “no repatriation” is simply not credible.

But the most disturbing element is Tony Burke’s role. 

As more documents emerge, it is now fair to say that Tony Burke has been caught out and now he’s hiding. 

He kicked the note-taker out of a secret meeting on ISIS brides and still won’t explain what was said once the official record-keeper was removed.

In June, Mr Burke chaired a meeting with a Save the Children and long-time ISIS-bride advocate. Halfway through, he asked the senior public servant taking notes to leave the room so they could “speak frankly”, on the basis that nothing from that discussion would be recorded unless he agreed.

You don’t throw the note-taker out unless you’re trying to keep something off the books.

The department’s own handwritten notes record the Home Affairs Secretary referring to a “comment to find a way” - Tony Burke indicating “there may be a way to achieve the same outcome without government undertakings”. Other notes record him assuring advocates that if the women were able to get out of the camps, there would be “no blockages to them returning” to Australia.

So when the Government says it had no involvement and gave no assistance, the question writes itself: how many more lies can the Albanese Government tell about these ISIS brides? They keep saying they weren’t involved in the repatriation, but the department’s own notes say Tony Burke would “find a way” to get them back to Australia. Both stories can’t be true.

The same meeting record shows Mr Burke stressing that the Government “doesn’t want to be perceived to have been paying to have them smuggled out” and thanking the group for keeping their plans out of the media. In other words, he was more concerned with how it looked than with telling Australians the truth.

These aren’t backpackers in trouble overseas. They are the wives of ISIS terrorists - yet Tony Burke holds a secret meeting, throws the note-taker out, and now the Government wants us to believe they played no role in bringing them home. 

It fails the pub test.

Australians deserve an urgent explanation from the Minister for Home Affairs: what was his exact role in the repatriation of these ISIS brides, and what commitments were made in that room once the officials were told to leave?

Until those questions are answered, the only reasonable conclusion is that this Government has been playing word games with national security, redefining “repatriation” and “assistance” so it can cling to a talking point while the documents tell a different story.

This is why the ISIS brides scandal is not just another Labor stuff-up. It is a fundamental breach of trust. It goes directly to whether Australians can rely on this Government to be honest about who is being allowed back into our country, under what conditions, and with what level of risk to our national security and social cohesion.