'Lame-stream' media lets Angus Taylor's lies go unchecked

As the next Federal Election approaches, misinformation from senior Liberals is increasing alarmingly. Alan Austin reports.

IN AN APPALLING display of hubris, hypocrisy and haughty pride, Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor regaled the Canberra press gallery last Tuesday with a string of falsehoods that would make Donald Trump blush. He was responding to the Reserve Bank's decision to cut Australia’s interest rates to 4.1%.

The craven press corps sat through it mutely and refused to fact-check any of his fraudulent claims.

ABC News shamelessly spreads Liberal Party’s blatant lies

The national broadcaster still refuses to fulfil its duty to broadcast the truth.

The Libs economic spokesman said:

“We have seen interest rate cuts in peer countries around the world between 1 and 2% — in countries including Canada, the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australians have been suffering in the meantime with high interest rates.”

Asserting Australia is trailing those three countries and Europe is laughable to all who follow comparative econometrics. Australia’s economy is streets ahead.

New Zealand is in full recession, with the jobless at 5.1%. Its interest rates have been above 5% for most of the last two years. Canada has suffered two quarters of contracting gross domestic product (GDP) in the last two years and has its unemployment at a shameful 6.7%. Interest rates in the USA have been much higher than Australia's since late 2020; its inflation is now surging, with most other indicators deteriorating.

All three are in deep budget deficits, unlike Australia, and are continuing to stack on government debt. This is true also for most of Europe. Taylor knows, however, that it's likely no one in the mainstream newsrooms has the first clue about the rest of the world, so he can get away with anything.

Standards of living fully recovered

Taylor asserted:

“Despite the welcome cut today, it’s a long journey back to the standard of living Australians had when these interest rate increases began. We’ve seen 12 interest rate increases under Labor and one down now, but we have also seen the biggest collapse in living standards in our history.”

This is totally false. For a start, there were 13 rate increases altogether. The first was before the 2022 Election. The next five were soon after that Election — before Labor’s reforms took effect.

Living standards declined steadily through the eight years and eight months of Coalition rule. They continued to decline for the first six months of the Albanese Government until its policy changes kicked in.

Since then, Labor has fully restored living standards for most Australians, as this column has shown over the last two years.

Albo and Dr Jim steadily reduce poverty and homelessness — at last

While more still needs to be done, efforts to combat severe disadvantage in Australia are working.

We have now published multiple charts which reveal the decline in wealth and income under the Coalition and the rapid recovery since.

These include graphs showing:

greatly improved budget outcomes,
share of gross national income to workers up from 49.3% to 53.5%,
surge in full-time jobs to population,
reduced underemployment,
fewer long-term jobless,
buoyant household spending,
boom in retail sales,
record retail sales to GDP,
increased finance for new home buyers,
strong increase in social housing,
reduced demand for emergency accommodation,
capital investment in public housing up 15.5% over 2022 levels,
exports surging as a percentage of GDP,
Labor’s budget surpluses; and
increasing construction output.

Latest retail trade figures show luxury spending is still accelerating. This emphatically confirms the shift from the Coalition’s cost of living crisis to a robust consumer spending boom. (See chart below.)

The data confirms that during the dismal Morrison years, Australians allocated more than 41% of all retail spending to essential food items, the highest since records began. This is now down to 39.6% and falling.

Policy changes have worked

This restoration of living standards is the result of Labor maintaining high job numbers, reducing taxes, controlling cost increases in most sectors, reducing prices in some sectors, lifting wages, pensions and benefits, facilitating record corporate profits, cutting student debt, providing energy subsidies and now cutting interest rates.

Wages have increased at a higher rate than inflation for five quarters now, with no sign of this reversing. (See chart below.)

Source: ABS File 6484 Table 1 and ABS File 6345 Table 1

So, it is quite false for Taylor to imply Labor was responsible for the decline in workers’ spending power. It wasn’t Labor. The Coalition was, as data proves.

Taylor continued:

“It means making sure government does tighten its belt, that it grows spending at a manageable rate, not at the rapid rate we've seen in recent times.”

Taylor, Peter Dutton and other Coalition figures routinely claim Government spending is causing Australia’s current woes. This has two embedded falsehoods. Firstly, there is no causal connection between spending and interest rates. Secondly, expenditure has been much lower under Labor than under the right-wing Coalition for decades — despite the media’s mendacious mantra declaring the opposite.

Last December’s Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) shows average spending to GDP over Labor’s three years has been 25.4% of GDP. For the final three years of the Coalition, this was 28.5%. Not even close.

The highest-spending government since World War 2 was the Morrison Government, in which Angus Taylor was a senior minister. The Liberals are craven liars and hypocrites, and mainstream newsrooms are their willing accomplices.

Of course, some Australians are still battling poverty and homelessness, particularly those with addictions, mental health issues or deep residual debt. Fortunately, those numbers are declining.

Many Australians will struggle with higher prices of some goods and services for a while yet. That is the price of electing a corrupt and incompetent regime.

Fortunately, the nation has emerged from the crisis phase, as all economic news is confirming. There is every chance this will continue, provided voters don’t buy the Coalition’s lies and deceptions.

Unfortunately, mainstream newsrooms are striving to ensure they do.