Election FactCheck: Has the Coalition presided over the most sustained fall in Australian living standards since records began?
- Written by The Conversation Contributor
If you think the party that has presided over the most sustained fall in our living standards since records began… then the Liberal Party is the party for you. – Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen, Treasurers' Debate, May 27, 2016.
During the Treasurers' debate with federal treasurer Scott Morrison at the National Press Club, Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen said that the Liberal Party had presided over the most sustained fall in Australian living standards since records began.
Bowen has made similar claims in the past.
Is he right?
It depends a bit on which dataset you’re looking at.
Checking the source
When asked for a source to support his assertion, a spokesman for Bowen supplied a spreadsheet downloaded from the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product data set. He highlighted this column:


Authors: The Conversation Contributor