Successive Liberal and Labor governments have run Australia’s fuel reserves down to dangerously low levels. Both parties are following an agenda to promote electrification, pushing for the adoption of electric cars and trucks. The most effective way to achieve this is to force petrol shortages, thereby forcing the public to buy electric vehicles.
Over the last seven years, four reports have all called for Australia to restart domestic oil production, open more refineries, build more storage tanks and increase our domestic reserves. For four years, the “Uniparty” did nothing.
This week, as the war in Iran has frozen oil shipments, I asked Minister Ayres what his government was doing to keep the economy moving. His non-answers would be laughable if the subject weren’t so serious.
One Nation will increase domestic extraction, refining, and storage because, unlike this government, we aren’t stupid.
⭐ I also need to correct the record regarding a statement in this video. I asked what would happen in a few weeks when our largest refinery closes for maintenance for 10 days; the correct information is that the refinery will actually be closing for 10 WEEKS 😲
Transcript
Senator Roberts: My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator Ayres. Yesterday, I asked you to confirm that Australia was entering a period of oil supply disruption, with a mere 26 days of petrol in the system. Under International Energy Agency guidance, the minimum fuel reserve is 90 days, yet you responded that Australia has 150 per cent of its minimum requirement. Last year, the Albanese government quietly chose to ignore the International Energy Agency and instead decided to introduce its own minimum stockholding obligations, which it set at a mere 24 days—problem solved! Aside from 26 not being 150 per cent of 24, how can you justify ignoring International Energy Agency best practice and introducing a patently absurd and dangerous minimum stockholding obligation of only 24 days of petrol supply? Why are you entrenching energy insecurity and volatility for which Australians will pay?
Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) (14:40): I’ll start at the end of that question, and then I’ll try to deal with some of the substance of it. Energy insecurity in Australia is a consequence of what happened over the Morrison-Abbott-Turnbull catastrophe where four out of our six oil refineries closed. Despite what Mr Hastie says, when he turns to you for work, these things are not straightforward to rebuild. Four out of six closed, so, if you want to ask questions about energy insecurity, ask them how it is that they sat on their hands for so long.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts?
Senator Roberts: Point of order: I’m not asking the opposition; I’m asking the minister, and I want an answer.
The PRESIDENT: I will direct the minister to your question. Minister Ayres?
Senator AYRES: While I’m on the subject of the opposition and the current fuel security arrangements—we have larger reserves on hand today than there have been at any time over the last 15 years as a result of the action, not words, that this government has taken. When Mr Taylor was in charge of energy, sort of—it was unclear, as I think Mr Morrison was secretly also the minister at the same time—he was the worst energy minister in Australian history and did more to debauch and pull down our energy policy framework. His proposition was that Australia’s fuel reserves should be contained in Texas. (Time expired)
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Senator Roberts: In the next few weeks, Brisbane’s Lytton fuel refinery is scheduled to close for 10 days maintenance. Lytton produces the majority of Australia’s domestic petrol, diesel and industrial gas. Ten days production taken out of the system at a time of supply shortage is a recipe for disaster. Why didn’t the Albanese government secure additional supply prior to Lytton closing to ensure fuel security in Australia?
Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) (14:43): In relation to the previous question, Texas in the United States—not Texas, Queensland—is where, supposedly, this character had our fuel. You say that there is a 10-day—I couldn’t be any more relevant.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts?
Senator Roberts: Point of order: I’m not asking about Texas. I’m asking about Lytton and securing additional fuel supplies to protect this country.
The PRESIDENT: I was about to direct the minister to your question, but he went to the question himself. Minister Ayres?
Senator AYRES: I did. Of course, these kinds of maintenance shutdowns occur from time to time. If there’s anything in relation to this particular shutdown that I can provide to you, I will. There are not six oil refineries. Four closed. Four closed when Senator Canavan, who’s very noisy about these issues in opposition, was as quiet as a mouse when the other side was in government. I think I’ve run out of time.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator Roberts: Of the 3,000 oil tankers that service Australia, we own just four, with a total capacity of approximately 1.8 million barrels every delivery cycle, which takes 30 days from Singapore and 40 days from South Korea, our major supply point. 1.8 million barrels is enough to last Australia six days. Minister, what’s your plan here? Will you beg other countries for some of their oil, force Australians to pay $3 a litre at the pumps, or use the petrol shortage to introduce more Labor communism control?
Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) (14:45): I’m not sure there’s an adjective big enough for that overreach in the English language. If you’re so critical of Mr Taylor’s performance as the Minister for Energy and the fact that our merchant fleet declined over that period, the fact that four out of our six oil refineries closed and the fact that 24 out of 28 coal-fired power stations announced their closure, why do you cuddle up to them so much?
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts?
Senator Roberts: I’m not asking about his uniparty mate, Mr Taylor. I’m asking about his own policy. What’s he going to do?
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, you’ve made the point of order. I will draw the minister to your question.
Senator AYRES: I’ve answered the question. I make the point that, if you and the Nationals and the Liberals really want to get behind Mr Taylor, who was the worst energy minister in our history, who did more damage than any other person to Australia’s energy security and who did more, along with Senator Hume, to trash the economic record of the Liberal Party at the last election, be our guest.
Milk’s up. Eggs? Up. Lights on? Might cost a kidney! Coffee’s $6. A sandwich? $50.
It’s not one big hit — it’s death by a thousand dollars.
Labor’s cost-of-living crisis is eating Aussie life, one small joy at a time.
Transcript
The price of milk is going up, The price of eggs is going up. The cost of freight is going up. Turning the lights on means selling a kidney on the black market. Everything’s expensive.
Want a Uber Eats sandwich these days? Well, there’s 50 bucks. A quick coffee to warm you up from whatever mini Ice Age we’re shivering in right now – there’s 6 bucks. It all adds up.
Now I like coffee, some days 2. $12.00 in coffee to stay alive. That’s $4,368 in coffee in a year.
Little things add up. 10 years ago it cost $1456 a year in coffee, the odd dollar here and there.
That’s what this cost of living crisis is built on. It’s eating away at the things Australians used to enjoy – one by one.
Even heading down to the pub with your mates for a couple of beers is a luxury expense.
I heard tolls were going up across Sydney – again! Drive across the bridge or have an extra cup of coffee? Turn the lights on or skip lunch? Use the air conditioning? Plug in an electric car to charge?
Are you crazy?
Every Labor tax hike, every bit of kindness to fund Treasurer Jim Chalmers latest thought bubble, every cent squeezed out of you adds up to a personal crisis.
So when we buy our eggs, we buy our milk, we take a detour to avoid a toll or walk past that coffee we can’t afford? Remember Labor’s greed added those costs. One man – $1.00 at a time.
The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, with a little help of course from Chris Brown and his mad, elusive cheap energy.
One Nation moved an amendment to a tax bill to end bracket creep, demonstrating our commitment to ending the Liberal-Labor stealth tax, who use inflation to push people into higher tax brackets.
The last time we moved to end bracket creep, both major parties and the Nationals claimed they were against it, yet they voted against our amendment. Why? Because they lie! They like bracket creep because it’s a stealth tax – a secret tax. Both depend on bracket creep to quietly take more money from workers.
One Nation wants to reform taxation and put more money in people’s pockets. At this election, vote One Nation #1
Transcript
Here we go again—bracket creep. Australians rightly complain that politicians from both major parties have no vision for our country’s future prosperity. It’s all just short-term budgets that never look beyond the next election. That’s why, tonight, One Nation is moving an amendment to the 2025 budget that would benefit our children’s children and everyone in Australia today. If successful, our amendment would remove the secret tax, the stealth tax, known as bracket creep. Bracket creep is where the government quietly takes more tax from Australians because of inflation. The government uses inflation to take more tax out of every Australian. This simple amendment to end bracket creep would save Australians tens of billions of dollars each year. It’s another One Nation plan to put more money back in your pocket.
So let me explain. As inflation continues, wages increase to try and keep up. A salary might go up from $100,000 to $120,000, yet, because of inflation, you can still only buy the same things because prices have risen. Despite being able to only buy the same things, your tax bill goes up because, on paper, the salary has gone up and been pushed into a higher tax bracket with a higher rate of tax. Inflation pushes up the salary you need to survive every year, yet the tax thresholds stay in exactly the same place. As salaries increase, they enter a higher tax rate bracket. This is bracket creep. One Nation would end it. We would index the income tax thresholds to inflation so you do not enter a higher tax rate bracket, making sure Australians don’t pay a higher tax rate because of inflation.
Tax reform is mentioned a lot in parliament. Here’s a genuine opportunity to do it. Australians are being squeezed from every angle. The current tax system is bleeding Australians dry while letting foreign multinational corporations rip off the country. Tonight, One Nation is proposing a policy that will tip the balance back towards helping Australians because we believe in putting more money back in Australians’ pockets. At the election, vote One Nation No. 1.
How They Voted
The Liberals, Nationals and Labor claim to support tax bracket indexation, yet twice I have moved an amendment to introduce it, and both times they have voted it down. The major parties want to dishonestly continue their thieving stealth tax.
One Nation has a plan to put serious money back in your pocket with big ideas and genuine reform that our children’s children will benefit from.
Australia needs meaningful vision, not election campaign bribes.
Media Release
While the Budget’s $5 a week tax cuts will be ‘dead on arrival’ due to inflation, the Senate will tonight vote on meaningful reform to eliminate bracket creep and provide real relief.
Inflation and bracket creep will outstrip the tax changes leaving Australians worse off and paying more tax for decades unless a One Nation sponsored amendment to index thresholds is supported in the Senate. Senator Roberts said:
‘Australians and especially young people have been screwed on tax and the latest changes are already dead on arrival.
‘A cup of coffee will be $7 by the time the $5 tax cuts arrive. Bracket creep means Australians will be paying tens of billions more in tax.
‘Unless bracket creep is eliminated the typical full-time worker will be pushed into paying the second highest tax rate at 37 cents a dollar within two terms.
‘Bracket creep is the government’s dirty little secret. Inflation means Labor will quietly pocket tens of billions of dollars in extra taxes.
‘Due to inflation wages increase and Australians move into higher tax brackets while only being able to buy the same things yet pay a higher tax rate.
‘Australians don’t deserve to pay for inflation twice and the budget shouldn’t benefit from inflation.’
One Nation will move a Senate amendment to the Treasury Laws Amendment (More Cost of Living Relief) Bill 2025 scheduled for a vote on Wednesday night.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Budget.jpg?fit=702%2C390&ssl=1390702Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2025-03-26 19:02:082025-03-26 19:02:16$5 Tax Cuts Dead on Arrival Thanks to Inflation
The government claims it’s winning the battle, yet out in the real world everything is still getting more expensive and nothing is anywhere close to the price it was 5 years ago.
You’re not crazy – the government’s just trying to gaslight you and tell you things are better than they are heading into an election. Only One Nation would make the real changes to put more money back in your pocket.
Transcript
One Nation supports this matter of urgency. During 2024 alone the living cost index for wage and salary earners rose four per cent, down from a high of six per cent earlier in the year. The reduction has been caused, in large part, through electricity subsidies. The government is paying your bill for you! The underlying inflation rate is still there, ready to reappear after the next election, when the government stops paying those subsidies.
Rising electricity prices for business are not being subsidised, increasing prices in supermarkets, retail, wholesale and manufacturing. The public see the price rises and don’t realise they are, in large part, the result of net zero measures, which One Nation will bring to an end, reducing power bills by 20 per cent immediately, and by much more over forward estimates.
Alcohol and tobacco costs rose due to the five per cent excise indexation and a cash grab the government calls AWOTE, where the more workers earn, the more the government increases the excise. One Nation will freeze all excise increases for three years. Watch for further announcements on this subject.
Insurance and financial services costs rose 13 per cent due to higher premiums for house, home contents and motor vehicle insurance. Insurance companies are becoming increasingly concentrated. Queensland’s Suncorp owns AAMI, GIO, Bingle and Shannons among others. Over the last five years Suncorp’s cash earnings rose from $59 to $108, and their share price rose from $9 to $17. One Nation will fund the ACCC, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, to ensure insurance companies are not ripping off consumers, including using fraudulent flood and bushfire maps to hike premiums. One Nation will remove the GST on insurance premiums.
Finally, the fall in inflation coming from a small reduction in the petrol price is significant. It proves One Nation’s policy to cut fuel excise by 26c per litre, and our other measures, will reduce inflation to make room for an interest rate cut. One Nation means more money in your pocket.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/YmUjdboczAk/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2025-03-20 14:34:152025-03-20 14:34:18Government Gaslighting on Inflation: One Nation Promises Real Relief
Australians deserve the truth about our economic reality, not sugar-coated statistics. While the official CPI reports 3.8% inflation, the actual cost of living for most working Australians is a staggering 6.2%
We need policies to end the inflation burden created by both major parties. Australia has everything we need right here to be the richest country in the world. It simply requires the guts to make common-sense decisions – and only One Nation has that guts!
Transcript
If you think you’re going backwards, you are, and faster than you think. Last Monday, we had an inquiry, as a result of a motion of mine, to understand the CPI figure from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That’s what we wanted to find out: what the Australian Bureau of Statistics does. My inquiry revealed that, as everyone knows, the CPI is 3.8 per cent, but selected living-cost indices that the Australian Bureau of Statistics produces and publishes show that most employees—80 per cent of Australians—face a cost-of-living increase in their spending of 6.2 per cent.
I’ve got no criticism of the ABS. They do what they’re told. Chart 1 in their submission shows that in 2022, soon after the coalition left, the CPI was eight per cent, and food and beverages went up by nine per cent. That’s the legacy that the coalition left. The CPI price change for dairy and related products over the last four years has been 27 per cent; food products, 23 per cent; bread and cereal products, 23 per cent. This is the reality: both the Labor Party and the Liberal-Nationals are contributing to inflation. The prices of groceries, insurance, housing, rents and energy are all artificial and only One Nation has the policies to be able to solve them because we don’t do what the uniparty does.
The Consumer Price Index shows inflation at just 3.8%, but how accurate is that figure? Every time I shop, it feels much higher.
Recently, I was successful in getting a Senate Inquiry into how the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) maintain the inflation index and the answers were interesting—inflation is worse than the official figure suggests.
The ABS actually produce several different measures of prices changes. The media often cites one of them – the CPI, which serves economists, bankers and the treasury, who use it to see how the economy is going as a whole, but it’s not an accurate measure of price changes that affects consumers.
To address this, the ABS produce the Living Cost Index (LCI), which looks at how much the cost-of-living has changed for different groups. The largest of these groups is for employees, which covers about 70% of Australians and reveals that inflation is actually 6.2%, significantly higher than the CPI figure of 3.8%. This difference largely stems from how house price increases are included in the index.
So, it’s clear: people are struggling more than the CPI suggests. If you feel like you’re working harder and getting nowhere, it’s because you are.
One Nation is committed to reducing government spending, reducing inflation and making your pay stretch further.
Transcript
I rise to take note of the Economic References Committee report into the Australian Bureau of Statistics production of inflation statistics. This inquiry was called on a Senate motion that One Nation introduced. I thank the committee for their time and I thank the Australian Bureau of Statistics for their honest, direct and professional answers. In an answer to my question in Senate estimates, the Reserve Bank governor advised that it uses many other indicators to get a clearer understanding of the cost of living affecting everyday Australians, not just the CPI. This was the comment that led to last week’s inquiry. Many people assume the CPI is an accurate picture of the cost of living for everyday Australians. What we learned from the ABS, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, is the consumer price index is a macro economic indicator useful to the government, Reserve Bank and industry to show how much prices have changed. That’s not the same as asking how much cost-of-living spending has increased for everyday Australians. That cost-of-living data is trapped using other indexes called selected living cost indexes. These are produced for subsets within the economy based on source of income. The largest group is employees, comprising 15 million current wage and salary earners. This is more than 70 per cent of the Australian adult population. This index shows the rate of inflation affecting the largest cohort of the adult population in Australia is actually 6.2 per cent. That feels much more accurate than the official CPI rate of 3.8 per cent. Even at 6.2 per cent, the figure is not entirely representative. The living cost index for most Australians does not include the insane increases in house prices, as Senator Rennick and I pointed out in questions.
The ABS traps the increase only in building costs, not the increase in land cost. The average home price in Queensland in 2020 was $524,000. In 2024, it’s now $815,000. Most of that inflation is in the land price. Unless home price inflation is included in the living cost index then Australians are quite honestly being misled—badly misled. The ABS is not misleading; it’s producing the statistics the government asked it to produce.
So I wonder who decided to use the CPI rate as the official picture of inflation in Australia, because it’s wrong. Why don’t the media report the living cost index showing 6.2 per cent inflation affecting most Australians, and that it doesn’t represent costs including houses? All except one of these living cost indexes shows a higher rate than the 3.8 per cent CPI. Why is the media misleadingly reporting the lowest figure instead of the real figure covering most Australians?
I have been using adult Australians here for a reason. This inquiry confirmed the Australian Bureau of Statistics does not collect data for inflation affecting the cost of raising children. The latest data my office could find was from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which found it cost $340 a week to provide for two children, a girl aged six and a boy aged 10. That data was from 2018. We don’t know what it is today. There’s not time-series data, no inflation rate over time for children and that seems pretty poor. There are 5.7 million children under 18 here in Australia. It would be useful to know how much the cost of raising those children is increasing.
As I travel around Queensland I hear so many parents saying how expensive life is becoming—the cost of living under Labor—and how expensive raising children is becoming. The failure to provide data to government on the outcome of government policies on the cost of raising children and an accurate figure for the cost of running a family is a massive failure, a failure which rests with the minister, not the Australian Bureau of Statistics. I call on the government to task the ABS with providing an accurate figure for inflation affecting families. It worries me that it is the figure of 3.8 per cent, not the much more accurate figure of 6.2 per cent, that’s used for wage increases. According to the OECD’s economic outlook report, real wages in Australia are now five per cent lower than they were in 2020.
Remember, those house prices I mentioned, up from $524,000 to $818,000 in Queensland in four years? After adjusting for inflation, everyday Australians looking to buy their first home are trying to afford that mortgage on five per cent less income. No wonder homeownership seems an impossible dream for young wage and salary earners. Wages should reflect the real cost of living under Labor. Government spending and handouts reduce the inflation rate yet this money started in the hands of employees, who paid that to the government in tax, and the government gives it back to people in subsidies, less the government’s cut for administration. Is this the much-touted Greens circular economy?
I’ll finish with an idea. Reduce the size of government. Let people keep more of their own money. If everyday Australians feel they’re working harder and going backwards, it’s because they are. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/UoGj62GseNA/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-10-24 16:53:052024-10-24 16:53:11True Inflation Rate at 6.2% – Far Higher Than Official 3.8%
Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the Albanese Government have created the worst economic conditions in Australia in 30 years. In an attempt to shift the blame for this mess, the Treasurer has unfairly targeted Reserve Bank Governor, Michelle Bullock. The reality is that the RBA has increased interest rates in response to the government’s policies. While the Treasurer could order the Reserve Bank to lower interest rates, the Government knows that doing this would make Australia’s economy worse. So instead, they trade insults.
It’s time for Treasurer Chalmers to stop the bullying and focus on solutions. Infrastructure is the key to overcoming this economic disaster.
In this speech, I outline how One Nation plans to bring down inflation and reduce interest rates.
Transcript
In the last few days Australians have witnessed an unedifying sight: the Treasurer blaming the Reserve Bank for policy outcomes that are firmly the government’s fault. When Treasurer Chalmers was rightly criticised for his misbehaviour the Labor Party rallied the troops, dusting off Labor Party artefact Wayne Swan to defend the Treasurer. This display is why people dislike and distrust politicians. The reality is that high interest rates are the direct result of economic policy under successive Liberal and Labor governments—policy that damaged our manufacturing and farming sectors whilst transferring gross domestic product from real jobs in the private sector to jobs in the government sector. Reserve Bank Governor Bullock’s interest rate strategy is a response to Labor government policy. Labor government policy has decided the RBA’s strategy.
Instead of bullying the Reserve Bank governor into taking further interest rate rises off the table, Treasurer Chalmers could take action to prevent the need for those rises. Balance the budget and reduce government spending to match your income; Minister Shorten tried to bring the NDIS under control, and you forced him to walk the plank. Stop replacing base load power with net zero wind, solar transmission lines and battery back-up, driving up electricity prices and sending the government into debt. Reduce immigration, which is distorting the housing market and inflating government welfare and infrastructure spending. Stop giving grants and subsidies to foreign multinationals operating solar and wind here, and instead encourage local companies who retain the wealth here. Develop our productive capacity through a national rail loop enabling an Australian steel industry. There’s $100 billion of production, 40,000 real jobs and $25 billion in government revenue just in the Capricornia steel proposal at Queensland’s Abbot Point and the port of Gladstone every year. Treasurer Chalmers should stop bullying and start building, which is exactly what a One Nation government will do.
Candidates from the Gold Coast electorates are joining together to outline their plans if elected in October. This is your opportunity to ask questions and explore One Nation’s solutions to the key issues facing Queenslanders.
Enjoy FREE tennis, plus refreshments and pizza! 🍕
Please RSVP 👉 here to assist with catering numbers.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Nick_GCA_D1_V4_EventsGraphics.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=110801080Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-10-01 16:26:462024-10-01 16:26:57Gold Coast Town Hall: One Nation’s Vision for Queensland
I recently succeeded in a Senate motion to bring in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to explain how their inflation statistics (CPI) is calculated. Their answers show that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is not a measure of how much it costs everyday Australian to live. Instead, it serves more as an indicator of where prices in the economy are heading, a useful tool for the Reserve Bank and Treasury.
The ABS also provides a set of other indicators, known as Cost of Living Indexes, which give a clearer indication of how price increases affect different groups. The largest of these is aimed at wage and salary earners, which encompasses 16 million Australians. This indicator shows that inflation for this group is running at 6.2%, rather than the official inflation rate of 3.8%.
The cost of living for most Australians is much higher under Labor than what Prime Minister Albanese and the Treasury acknowledge. If it feels like you’re working harder and going backwards, it’s because you are.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing here. CPI has been discussed informally as something that is very important to a lot of people around Australia. A lot of things are based on it. So let me just check my understanding. The Australian Bureau of Statistics produces a set of indices called living cost indexes. These are designed to show the inflation facing specific demographics within the Australian population. As I understand it, your latest indexes, released on 7 August, showed the following. Pensioners and beneficiaries have a living cost index of 4.1 per cent. Employees have a living cost index of 6.2 per cent. Age pensioners have a living cost index of 2.7 per cent. Other welfare is at 4.6 per cent, Self-funded retirees are at 2.8 per cent. I don’t know if they are getting self-funded in part or wholly or whatever. Perhaps we can explore that. And the consumer price index is 2.8 per cent. Are they all correct?
Mr Goldsworthy: They are all correct, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: My concern is this, Mr Goldsworthy. Is your CPI representative of the inflation that adult working employee Australians are experiencing? The ABS dataset 6336 working arrangements as at August 2023 shows there are 14 million people working for a wage or salary in Australia, including owner-managers of their own business entity. Does that mean small businesses are included in that figure of 14 million and, if so, how many?
Mr Goldsworthy: Sorry, I might need you to repeat the question.
Senator ROBERTS: The ABS dataset 6336 working arrangements as at August 2023 shows there are 14 million people working for a wage or salary in Australia. That includes owner-managers of their own business entity. Does that mean small businesses are included in that figure of 14 million?
Mr Goldsworthy: I’m not sure off the top of my head. We don’t have those figures to hand.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you know how many small businesses there are?
Mr Goldsworthy: No. We came prepared to talk about questions in relation to the consumer price index.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, that’s where I’m heading. I’d like to know how many people depend upon the CPI figure.
Mr Goldsworthy: We can certainly take that on notice for you.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Does the employees figure include the one million contractors as listed in your characteristics of employment page?
Mr Merrington: The employee households represent wage earners.
Senator ROBERTS: Purely wage owners, no small businesses or self-employed owner-managers?
Mrs Marquardt: It’s wherever the main income of households is. If you are a household and you maybe have a wage earner and somebody who receives a pension, if the main income for the household is wages then they would be counted in the living cost indexes for employees.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I will just go through the living cost indexes again. The jargon gets me, so just bear with me, please. There’s pensioner and beneficiary. So there’s no small business in that.
Mrs Marquardt: That is a household whose main source of income is government pensions.
Senator ROBERTS: Then there are employees who are adult working employees. Is that including owner-managers of their own businesses?
Mrs Marquardt: No, I think it would be employees, not business owners.
Senator ROBERTS: In the figures I’ve got—one of my staff has done the research—there are 14 million people working for a wage or salary in Australia, including owner-managers of their own business entities.
Mrs Marquardt: We can come back to you on it, but I believe it’s just whether or not they are earning a wage or a salary as an employee, not—
Senator ROBERTS: As an employee of somebody else?
Mrs Marquardt: As an employee of somebody else, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. So we may be wrong there. Then the next group is age pensioners.
Mrs Marquardt: They receive an age pension from the government. That’s the main source of income for that type of household.
Senator ROBERTS: Then there’s other welfare and self-funded retirees. As I said, I don’t know if that’s partial income or it is their main source—
Mrs Marquardt: It is their main source of income if they are a self-funded retiree—that is, they are not on the age pension.
Senator ROBERTS: So where would small businesses, owner-managers and contractors fit?
Mrs Marquardt: They don’t really fit into the consumer price index or the living cost indexes because it is about households. It’s not about businesses; it is about expenditure by households.
Senator ROBERTS: What about a small business owner that has a house? How do you capture them?
Mrs Marquardt: I’m not sure. I’d have to check.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m trying to get a feel for how many Australian people are in an employee category and then where the other working people, including small businesses, owner managers and contractors, fit. I’m trying to get a feel for how many Australians are affected by these figures, the CPI—
Mrs Marquardt: Or covered by them.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Mrs Marquardt: From memory, off the top of my head, I think it’s about 24 per cent. Let me take that on notice. I’m not 100 per cent certain.
Mr Goldsworthy: We can come back to you. It’d certainly be the vast majority. My understanding of the origin of these indices is we have sought to capture the major household types dependent on their main source of income, as Mrs Marquardt went through and, indeed, you went through in asking your question. The main source of income is the pension for many people. For others it might be earning a wage or salary. Others might be retired but don’t use the pension and are self-funded. Others rely on government welfare payments. They are the main categories of income for household types. We have built the selected living cost indices around those. But we are certainly happy to take on notice if we can provide you with a detailed breakdown of the composition of Australian households.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, if you could, please. I’d like to know about owner-managers, because they are employees but they are not in any of the other groups, and contractors and small businesses who pay themselves. I’d like to know how many people are in that employees group. How many Australians are affected? When they hear that their living cost index is 6.2 per cent, how many people does that apply to?
Mr Goldsworthy: Certainly.
Senator ROBERTS: You don’t know that offhand? I’m not necessarily expecting you to. I know you’ve got a lot—
Mr Goldsworthy: No.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. So it doesn’t include contractors, which are listed in your characteristics of employment page, but purely employees?
Mrs Marquardt: I need to check because I haven’t looked into that for a while. I need to check where those people are classified or whether they are just not covered by any of those indexes.
Senator ROBERTS: As I said, the dataset 6336 on working arrangements shows there are 14 million people working for a wage or salary in Australia. That, I presume, is the largest group within your living cost indexes. Is that correct?
Mrs Marquardt: That would make sense.
Mr Goldsworthy: Yes, I would assume so.
Senator ROBERTS: What’s the next largest group of the ones I called out—pensioners and beneficiaries, employees, age pensioners, other welfare and self-funded retirees?
Mrs Marquardt: Again, I’d have to check because that information actually comes from the Household Expenditure Survey and the Survey of Income and Housing. In those surveys we go out and ask people what they earn from a whole bunch of different income sources. That might be superannuation or it might be wages or it might be all the different sorts of income you can have. Then, from there, we aggregate all those things together to see what the main source of income is for that household. So I’ll have to go back and have a look at those particular surveys to figure out what the actual numbers that fit into each of those categories are.
Senator ROBERTS: We’ve agreed that the employees category of the living cost index contains the largest number of Australians—that’s 14 million. What would be the second largest, roughly? Would it be pensioners and beneficiaries, age pensioners, other welfare, self-funded retirees or small businesses? There are millions of small businesses?
Mr Goldsworthy: Rather than taking a stab at that, I think it’s probably better, if you’re comfortable, for us to give you the figures on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: I value accuracy, so I’m happy with that. This is not a trap or a gotcha. So it would be around—I’m just pulling a number out of the air—14 million people plus other pretty large groups. So three-quarters or two-thirds of the Australian adult population is looking at the CPI, which is 3.8 per cent, and thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ because their inflation rate is actually 6.2 per cent.
Mr Goldsworthy: It might be useful, I think, if we take a step back and just briefly talk through the differences between the CPI and the selected living cost indices. I’ll get my colleagues to expand on the detail, but I think one point to keep in mind is that no single index will serve every purpose. Indeed, that is why we produce many different indexes of inflation. What the CPI does is measure the change in the prices of goods and services purchased by households. A lot of people use that as a proxy for change to the cost of living, but the concepts are actually a little bit different. That’s precisely why we produce these separate selected living cost indices. I think we’ve been doing that since the late 1990s.
There are two principal differences at a higher level between the selected living cost indices and the CPI. One is the weights we use to aggregate the prices of individual goods and services into an index. For the CPI, we use weights based on household spending patterns in the eight capital cities. Whereas, for the living costs indices, we use weights that reflect the spending patterns of the particular household type. We went through those different household types. The other big difference—and it gets a little bit technical—is about using an acquisitions approach for the CPI versus an outlays approach for the cost-of-living indices, but the key point of difference is the treatment of housing. I think we might have discussed this at estimates previously.
Senator ROBERTS: And I’ll come onto that again.
Mr Goldsworthy: For the CPI, we separate the cost of housing. We think about there being two components. One is land, which is an asset or an investment which isn’t included in the CPI. The other is the cost of building new structures, so a new house. That’s what we capture in the CPI. We also, of course, capture the rents for those that are renting properties. The living cost indices, as I said, follow the outlays approach. For that we include the outlay a household needs in order to acquire the house, and for many households that involves a mortgage. So we include the mortgage interest costs in compiling the—
Senator ROBERTS: But not the cost of the house, just the mortgage interest costs?
Mr Goldsworthy: That’s right, just the mortgage interest costs. I don’t know whether you want to correct the record or expand on any of that detail.
Mrs Marquardt: No, I think that’s fine. One concept is that you’ve bought it at the time. You bought the house in the first period that you’re trying to measure and comparing to the next period, and the assumption is that you’ve bought the whole house then, but obviously most people don’t pay for the house upfront. That’s the difference in the living cost indexes, because the living cost indexes are how much you are paying to continue to have that asset. People who’ve bought it using a mortgage have to pay interest charges on that mortgage. They are the big differences, as Brenton said.
Senator ROBERTS: Am I right in thinking that it’s misleading for so many people? I’m guessing two-thirds, three-quarters, 80 per cent of the Australian population is actually facing a 6.2 per cent cost increase, whereas the CPI tells them it’s 3.8. When they go to the supermarket they think, ‘This is not right,’ and when they think about their home payments they think, ‘This is not right.’
Mr Goldsworthy: I certainly wouldn’t say it’s misleading. They measure different things. So, when it comes to supermarket prices, for example, they’re measured the same because CPI and living cost indexes—
Senator ROBERTS: No, I accept that. But most people, overwhelmingly, would say that CPI tells them how much it’s going up by, but they’re saying it’s going up by way more than 3.8 per cent. Without an explanation of the CPI versus employee living cost index, most people are saying that this is not right.
Mr Goldsworthy: One way I think about it is that, when mortgage interest rates are stable, CPI and living cost indices broadly move in line with each other. But, because of the different treatment of housing, when mortgage interest rates are either going up or going down, there will be a divergence between the two indices.
Senator ROBERTS: Without explaining it to people so that they understand what’s going on, how can we justify using a measure that does not reflect the actual inflation rate for a significant proportion of the population?
Mr Goldsworthy: Like I said, it really comes down to the purpose behind the particular index. One way of thinking about the CPI is that it’s a macroeconomic measure to inform government and the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Senator ROBERTS: These are economists and people making policy decisions in the industry.
Mr Goldsworthy: That’s right. And what we try and pick up there is the pure price change. Previously, we’ve talked about how we capture things like shrinkflation and other quality adjustments.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll come back to that one again, too.
Mr Goldsworthy: So, it’s very important that we capture the pure price change, which is what the CPI tries to do. We’ve gone through the different treatment in housing as well. Which indices you should use really comes down to what question you’re trying to answer.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m guessing most Australians would think, ‘I want to know how much it’s affecting me,’ so they’d go to the CPI, but the actual living cost index is much higher. Can we come to something else that’s a big cost burden on people and also joy: children? Looking through your methodology, we didn’t see a lot there about children. The Australian Institute of Family Studies put out a measure in 2018 of how much it costs to raise a child, finding that it cost $340 a week to raise a six-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. Was that Australian Bureau of Statistics data, and is there any inflation time series around the cost of raising children?
Mr Goldsworthy: I’m not personally familiar with that data.
Senator ROBERTS: So, the ABS doesn’t—
Mrs Marquardt: I think you gave us the source, and it wasn’t the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Senator ROBERTS: No, it was the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Did they rely upon you?
Mrs Marquardt: They may do. Again, I’m not sure without looking at their thing. I go back to the price indexes. This doesn’t have a level of spending in it; it’s obviously about the change in prices. So, to the extent that people are buying things for their children like toys, child care or anything like that, all of that is covered by the CPI and the living cost indexes.
Senator ROBERTS: But you can’t tell how much inflation is around the cost of raising a child? You can’t pull that out?
Mrs Marquardt: No. We don’t put out a separate index that’s just for things that are bought for children.
Senator ROBERTS: How does your data help a family quantify how much the inflation rate is impacting on their household?
Mrs Marquardt: If you really wanted to, you could pick out different parts of the index and combine them together. So, if you wanted to combine food, childcare expenses and toys or whatever else it is that’s related to having a child, then you could do that. But, really, the bottom line is that the CPI is not actually about individual types of households or individual people; it represents the whole household sector.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m just wondering how parents judge their spending forward plans, wage and salary demands, and decisions around having children on that measure of how much kids cost. How do parents understand their inflation rate from your data? I would think it would be a very good KPI for politicians to assess how much it costs to raise a child, but that’s not possible.
Mrs Marquardt: There are two different things. There’s how much it costs to raise a child, which is the dollar amount of things—that’s kind of a level; it’s that you pay $20 for a toy—versus the price index, which is saying how much the price for that toy has changed. So there are two different things.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand.
Mrs Marquardt: One of the things that you can do is look at your household budget. If your household is spending X per cent of its budget on food, then you could use our indexes to show how much the prices that your particular household is paying are changing.
Mr Goldsworthy: To expand on that, we have 11 groups and 87 expenditure classes in the CPI, so you can certainly look up the ABS website and look through the price change for each of those 87 expenditure classes. I think I’m right in saying that we also publish the weights for each of those classes, so you can see the weight that is used in the CPI, and people can make their own assessment as to whether how much they spend is higher or lower.
Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on to housing. The ABS dataset entitled ‘Residential property price indexes’ has been discontinued. I can see an index called ‘Total value of dwellings’, with the emphasis on ‘value’. The summary page doesn’t provide any usable information to anyone trying to find out how much the average price has gone up. We can get that data if I download the spreadsheet 6432 and work it out for ourselves, yet that’s not reported. Is there a simple visual representation of house price inflation in each state to which the people can refer?
Mrs Marquardt: We discontinued that because there are a number of other sources that give that very similar type of information. CoreLogic is one; Domain is another.
Senator ROBERTS: They’re private companies, aren’t they?
Mrs Marquardt: That’s right, but they use the same methodology as we used to use when we did the residential property price indexes. So, effectively, they were putting out the same information a bit earlier, so we were getting all of our information from them and then republishing it.
Senator ROBERTS: Why did you stop? Could they do it more quickly?
Mrs Marquardt: That’s right.
Senator ROBERTS: What are the hurdles there? I would have thought that no-one would be able to do it more quickly or better than the ABS.
Mrs Marquardt: They get information from all of the sales that are made either through the valuer generals or other data sources like realestate.com.au. They basically were able to put it together much faster than us. In fact, the source of the information in the residential property price indexes and the total value of dwelling stocks is CoreLogic.
Mr Goldsworthy: It’s also the case that we need to make prioritisation decisions, and we make a judgement as to where we can add the most value. Given the private sector sources available for residential prices, we made the judgement that we could add more value by reallocating resources.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ve got no problem with the government saying, ‘Leave it to the private sector,’ if that’s the way they see it. If the mean price of a home in Queensland in 2020 was $524,000 and that same figure in 2024 is $815,000, per your dataset 6432, column AE, line 42, has that housing price inflation been captured in the CPI? I’m guessing not.
Mr Goldsworthy: A large component of that price inflation would reflect the increase in land prices, and, as I said before, land is treated as an asset or investment, so that component isn’t captured in the CPI.
Senator ROBERTS: Can we break out land from housing construction or housing prices? You said that it’s not captured.
Mrs Marquardt: We price project homes—
Mr Goldsworthy: We price the cost of building a new home, and the change in the price of building a new home reflects changes in the cost of building either through materials or through labour.
Senator ROBERTS: I remember running an economic summit in my office. We hired a room in the Queensland parliament building in 2017. Dr Alan Moran gave us some figures. He said that the cost of building a house in Houston, Texas, at that time was the same roughly as the cost of building a house in Sydney. The huge differential in house prices was due to land. Is there some way that people can capture that? The mean price of a home in Queensland in 2020 was $524,000, and that same figure now in 2024 is $815,000. That’s a hell of an increase.
Mrs Marquardt: There’s another part that goes to this. The CPI is about the changes in prices of the household sector—for example, what the household sector is purchasing from the business sector or the government sector—so the sale of existing houses between one household and the next effectively nets out. There’s no weight. They’re not in the CPI because they’re being sold, for example, from me to Brenton.
Senator ROBERTS: So what you’re saying is that someone gets more money for selling it and someone has to pay more money for buying it?
Mr Goldsworthy: That’s right.
Mrs Marquardt: That’s right. But they’re both household—
Senator ROBERTS: But the one who’s now buying a property for the first time, compared to 2020, is now facing a 55 per cent increase compared to their peers in 2020.
Mrs Marquardt: But there’s somebody else in the household sector who sold it to them, so it nets out.
Senator ROBERTS: I get that.
Mrs Marquardt: What remains are brand-new houses, which are what we price. We price brand-new project homes and exclude land, as Brenton said, because that’s an asset. Existing houses are excluded because the sale is between one household and another household, and new households are represented by pricing project homes but not the land.
Senator ROBERTS: What about someone who bought a house in 2020 for $525,000 and sold it in 2024 for $815,000? So someone’s paid the extra money, and they’ve received the extra money for selling it, but then they have to go and buy another place. It’s going to be captured anyway. It needs to be captured anyway.
Mrs Marquardt: It just keeps netting out because it’s between households. You need to think about the CPI as representing price change for all households.
Senator ROBERTS: So it’s not really representative of the individual.
Mrs Marquardt: That’s right.
Senator ROBERTS: The CPI is not representative for an individual.
Mrs Marquardt: That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: I think that would be a surprise to many Australians. It’s not a criticism. If that’s the way your formula works, that’s fine. But a lot of people are relying on your CPI figure.
Mrs Marquardt: It’s not because, for example, it has rents and new homes by owner-occupiers. Conceptually, you can’t actually rent and buy a house for yourself. So, conceptually, the CPI does not represent any individuals because it represents what all households in Australia are spending.
Senator ROBERTS: But it’s in the aggregate of all Australian households.
Mrs Marquardt: It’s in the aggregate. That’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: So some people are doing really well, or not suffering, and other people are suffering and sleeping under bridges in Queensland. That’s not your fault. I’m not trying to imply that. But you do capture mortgage cost changes. Let’s consider that. If the average mortgage in the employee living cost index in 2020 was $500,000 and in 2024 is $800,000, do you show that as an increase in interest charges?
Mrs Marquardt: Yes, to the extent that mortgages have gone up, so that would mean that you need to pay more interest. There are two things that can make your interest payments higher: one of them is the interest rate and the other one is the size of your mortgage. To the extent that people’s mortgages have gone up or the interest rates have gone up, both those things show up in the changes in the mortgage interest charge costs.
Senator ROBERTS: So both the interest rate and the higher mortgage?
Mrs Marquardt: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, thank you. Moving on to land tax. Victoria has increased their land tax by creating a $975 surcharge—wow—and a 0.1 per cent increase in the rate. Does that increase factor into the CPI or LCI?
Mr Merrington: Yes, we include property rates and charges in the CPI and living cost indexes.
Senator ROBERTS: So not just rates but all government charges stay with the local council?
Mr Merrington: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, let’s move on. In the June Senate estimates I asked about the change to the weighting for recreation and culture. Mr Gruen took that question on notice and I have not received an answer, so I’ll ask again. I’ll read the question as I stated it back in June. In the last change of weighting, the weighting for the category of recreation and culture increased by 16 per cent. That category happened to be one of the leading disinflationary categories dragging down the CPI figure. Is the ABS telling Australians that, in the middle of the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades, they’re spending 16 per cent more on recreation and culture than a year ago?
Mrs Marquardt: First of all, I’d say: apologies for not answering that question. I’m not quite sure how we missed it, but the main driver of that increase in the weight for recreation was people’s travel overseas. During the COVID pandemic, obviously not very many people were travelling overseas, so its weight came right down. But, if you look at the overseas arrivals and departures data that we publish, it shows that levels of overseas travel have returned to almost the same level as they were before COVID. Consequently, the weight for travel has gone back up to being similar to what it was before COVID.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s gone up off a low base because of COVID?
Mrs Marquardt: Yes, that’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: So in that sense it is misrepresenting what’s going on. I’m not questioning your methodology, but, just for people to understand, it would be better to compare it with something just before COVID. It’s difficult what you’re doing, I take it.
Mr Goldsworthy: I don’t know whether you’ve got a copy of the submission we provided to this hearing, but we’ve—
Senator ROBERTS: No, I haven’t. My apologies.
Mr Goldsworthy: When you get a chance to have a look at it, we’ve got a table that shows the weights.
Senator ROBERTS: One of my staff is up the back; we didn’t get it.
Mr Goldsworthy: It’s on page 5.
CHAIR: While you’re comparing that, can I take the opportunity to share the call?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes. I’d like to come back on shrinkflation.
*** *** ***
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll come back to that in a minute, but I’d like to ask you some questions about shrinkflation. Food is an important element of how the public perceives the cost of living. Can you tell me what percentage of the CPI basket is occupied by food, and how has that weighting changed over the last five years?
Mr Merrington: Our food and non-alcoholic beverages category represents around 17 per cent of the CPI.
Senator ROBERTS: Seventeen?
Mr Merrington: Seventeen. That includes restaurants and take-away food as well.
Senator ROBERTS: I said all food, so that’s good, thank you. Food has been subject to what is commonly called shrinkflation. This is where the pack size reduces but the price remains the same. If, for example, a product in your basket reduces in size from 500 grams to 400 grams but the price remains the same, is that 20 per cent inflation recorded as 20 per cent inflation in your index? It’s actually 25.
Mr Merrington: Yes, that’s correct.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s recorded?
Mr Merrington: As a price increase, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Clothing, I understand, is also tracked like for like—for example, a 100 per cent cotton dress, or by utility, such as an adult female dress. I’m curious how do you track clothing over time.
Mr Merrington: We do make attempts to price the same item each period. When the quality of that item changes, we make an attempt to adjust for that quality change, whether it’s an improvement or a decrease in quality. It is very challenging and something we put a lot of effort into. But, as my colleagues have said, we’re trying to capture the pure price change, which removes any change in quality.
Senator ROBERTS: If someone is buying a cotton dress regularly and the price of cotton dresses or dresses generally increase, they could change to polyester. Would that be captured?
Mr Merrington: We would look at it on a case-by-case basis, and we would make an attempt to adjust. You’ve got to try and quantify a quality change. It’s not always possible but we do make an attempt to adjust for quality changes.
Senator ROBERTS: So it would be hard to say, ‘We’ve noticed that,’ that the price of clothing is increasing—as are groceries and housing—and people are buying polyester instead of cotton. It would be hard to know that, wouldn’t it?
Mr Merrington: It would be, yes. We wouldn’t have that level of information on the type of spending at that level of detail.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ve always just accepted the CPI. It’s a per cent. That’s good. It represents things. It represents the cost increase. But it all depends upon your product—you’ve got a difficult job, so I’m not criticising you for this. Is the ABS thinking about the fact that your CPI is different things to different people? If someone is on a living cost index—for employees it’s 6.2 per cent, from memory—they’re finding a lot more inflation than someone who’s just looking at the CPI.
Mrs Marquardt: That’s correct.
Mr Goldsworthy: The CPI has always been a macroeconomic measure of inflation or an economy-wide measure of inflation, so individuals will have different experiences of inflation. Senator ROBERTS: This is possibly a policy question. Is there any thought given within the ABS as to whether your product is suitable, as it’s evolved over the years to various different uses that it’s now being put to? It’s used by journalists, either to create headlines or to smash the government or smash the opposition or whatever. It’s used by politicians to justify or to attack. It’s used by parents who are thinking, ‘How the hell can we afford to live?’ It’s used by businesses. There are many different users and many different customers. Is there any consideration in the ABS to amend that or explain the different indexes?
Mr Goldsworthy: From time to time, we do reviews of the CPI, as you’d be aware. We are in the process of producing a full monthly CPI, which we’re on track to deliver by the end of next year. As a part of that, we had a consultation period, towards the end of last year, from memory. We engage with a wide range of stakeholders whenever we release the CPI. Certainly, the feedback we’ve had through the reviews and the informal feedback through the casual consultation we have when we release the CPI is that everybody is very supportive of the current practice.
Senator ROBERTS: How much do they know of the current practice? I appreciate what you’re saying. They like the full monthly one; it’s a good product. But if they don’t understand that it might not represent their reality, they’re just going to rubberstamp it and say it’s good.
Mr Goldsworthy: We’re extremely transparent about the methodology we use to produce not just the CPI but also the other indexes. The information is certainly on our website, and we try to make it as easy to understand as possible.
Senator ROBERTS: It’s not easy. What do you think the chances are of employees knowing that they’re facing a living cost indexes increase of 6.2 per cent when the CPI, they’re being told, is 3.8 per cent? They’re thinking, ‘No, it’s much more than 3.8 per cent.’
Mr Goldsworthy: We tell employees, through the release of the selected living cost indexes, the different rates of inflation for the different household types. All that information is released in the public domain. The CPI is measured appropriately for its primary use as a macroeconomic measure of inflation used by government, RBA and others.
Senator ROBERTS: I think most people would be surprised with what you just said. I know I am, and I’m fairly well informed. I’m told by a member of my staff that the employees category, facing a 6.2 per cent cost-of-living index, includes owner-managers. I want to know the answers to the other questions. How many people in Australia are facing 6.2 per cent in their living cost index?
Mr Goldsworthy: Yes, certainly, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s all I had. Thank you very much.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/s7yIs4gKj0U/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-09-26 17:45:002024-09-26 17:49:06Cost of Living is Hitting Australians Harder Than You Think
