Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great honour to be speaking about this issue and following the member for Deakin on this matter about the cost of living. In listening to the member for Deakin and the achievements of the government that he has listed, one would think that we are living in a utopia, that in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, which he is part of, there is boundless prosperity, that there are no cost-of-living constraints, that people can wander into doctors’ surgeries without having to worry about bulk-billing, that people do not have a care about industrial relations and that child care is fine—that it is a perfect world.

But it is interesting, in their perfect world, in the suburbs and the electorate that I represent, that last year, when petrol prices were about $1.30 a litre, inflation was about four per cent and we had just come off another interest rate rise, I distributed a survey to my constituents asking for their views about the cost of living, their concerns with industrial relations, their hopes and fears for the future and issues that concerned them. The interesting thing about this utopia—listening to the member for Deakin—that may help the member for Deakin in terms of facts and figures, was that there was a 22 per cent response rate; unheard of in outer suburban areas. Do you know what the interesting things that they raised were? Their main concerns were job security and cost of living. In fact, they were very angry. So in this utopia that you talk about, Member for Deakin, the No. 1 concern that they had as a consequence of the introduction of the Work Choices legislation was job security. Why would that be, in utopia?

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