The words spoken by Senator Gallagher during an interview this morning were what I was saying back in March of this year.

A federal government with only a teaspoon of economic understanding would have, or indeed should have, seen the dangers of what the supply side-effects of the lack of secondary materials would have on inflation, and our economy.

What the federal government has done too late in the piece, and very ineffectually is to fuel the demand side of the economic equation in circumstances whereby wages had been stagnant. Demand is increasing and the lack of the secondary level manufacturing in Australia is virtually non-existent as successive Coalition governments have said bon voyage to the secondary level manufacturing occurring here in Australia, instead 55,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost, and the skill set which accompanies those people.

We are now too reliant on China and India for producing our goods. That is why a Labor Government led by Anthony Albanese will assist Australian businesses to resume manufacturing here, including increasing TAFE placements so that we again may resume our place in the world as a manufacturing country. That leads to reasons why Senator Gallagher made these sensible and factually correct remarks this morning about Mr Morrison’s role this inflationary juggernaut:

“Well, that is the prime minister’s responsibility. The cost of living crisis, frankly, is something that the prime minister should have a plan to deal with and should have had a plan to deal with not just in the last month, but over the last few years. And that is the critical point and a point of criticism that we’ve been making about him.”

The moment the world shut down in 2020 Mr Morrison should have started the ball rolling by addressing the supply side problems which were inevitably going to arise once countries started emerging from lockdown. It is very bad economic planning by the Morrison Government not to either undertake or foreshadow this inflationary event.