Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The 43rd Parliament is full of ironies and nothing could be more ironic than the member for North Sydney, of all people, coming into the House on the day that the Australian Bureau of Statistics has reported the lowest underlying inflation rate for five years to complain about cost-of-living pressures. It is ironic for two reasons. The first is that the consumer price index does matter, yet the member for North Sydney came in here trying to suggest to the broader community—tapping in to some popular sentiment, I must add—that the CPI is somehow wrong and distorted. I look forward to hearing from him his proposal to reform the way in which we measure the cost of living in this country. The other irony is obvious. I said the ‘member for North Sydney’—the member who represents a suburb which rates amongst the five wealthiest areas in our country. The member for North Sydney would not know what it is like to put a family budget together, what it is like to worry about how the electricity bills will be paid, and how the groceries will be paid for.

The government, despite our fantastic economic performance, recognises that there are cost-of-living pressures out there in the community. This is a debate about what we have done about that and what those opposite did not do about that. We know inflationary pressures come when the aggregate economy gets out of balance, when demand outstrips supply, and that is why we have been working over the past three years or more to address that imbalance by investing in infrastructure and in the supply side of the economy.

The best thing you can do for a working family is to grow the economy, which we have done in the face of the greatest global financial crisis in decades. We have kept interest rates relatively low because we have returned balance to the aggregate economy. Just as importantly as any of that, we have kept people in jobs. Those opposite believe the best way to help those who earn money on behalf of their families is to make it easier to sack them. That is what the member for North Sydney believes in. He believes in making it easier to sack them. His view of the world is that that is how you help families deal with cost-of-living pressures.

Let us ask ourselves what this government has done to help families deal with cost-of-living pressures. How about lower taxes? They do not believe in lower taxes. The member for North Sydney was with the leader of those who introduced large tax cuts in 2005 targeted at those people living in North Sydney but which forgot all those who were really struggling out there in the broader community. The fact is that someone on $50,000 today is paying $1,750 less tax than they were in 2007-08. Since 2009 we have increased the pension by around $115 a fortnight. With the education tax refund families can now claim up to 50 per cent of the cost—up to $390 a year—of putting their children through education. The Prime Minister went through many these during question time today.

The member for North Sydney came in here full of bluster but he put forward not one proposal to ease cost-of-living pressures on Australian families and said nothing about the Labor government’s record over the last three years. How laughable it is for the member for North Sydney to come in here on the release of the CPI—a day of record low inflation—and feign concern for those working-class families who are facing cost-of-living pressures. Of course, power prices have been going up—that is true—but it is a state issue. Those opposite are professionals at coming in here and talking about state issues. They do not want to talk about national issues or issues which are the responsibility of the Commonwealth government, because they are ashamed of their record and they are envious of those of us on this side of the parliament who again, in the face of the greatest global financial crisis in decades, managed to restore this country to slow growth, managed to create jobs and managed to take that pressure off working families.

How ridiculous it is for the member for North Sydney to come in here and spend most of his time talking about industrial relations, which of course we are happy to debate—particularly the relationship between Work Choices and cost-of-living pressures on working families. He tried to argue that somehow we were not a reforming government; that they were. I do remember a reform on that side—it was called the GST. They will argue that it is a tax now accepted by the broader Australian community. Let me give those opposite one example of how the GST continues to impact on Australian families, notwithstanding what they would argue is the compensation put in place to offset the GST.

Let us take members opposite to something called petrol prices. Does anyone on that side ever hear from constituents concerned about petrol prices? Let me give you the story. When the GST was introduced, the excise was reduced to offset the impact of the GST on petrol. Otherwise you would have had a compounding tax-on-tax effect on petrol prices. But here is the trick: the excise was reduced by 7c or thereabouts. The calculation was that that would offset the impact of the GST while ever petrol prices were less than 70c a litre. Of course any price above 70c a litre means that the GST is adding to the cost of petrol. With petrol at about a $1.30 a litre, everyone listening to this debate will immediately and easily see that the GST remains a tax on a tax on petrol. Every time motorists fill up their vehicle with petrol, they should remember the coalition’s only real reform—and it was called the goods and services tax.

Specifically, what is Labor doing in areas like my own to reduce cost-of-living pressures? Again, we are growing the economy locally and we continue to open up our economy to the rest of the world, unlike those opposite who have gone all insular and are now embracing these Hansonite policies. We are introducing a new tax on coalmining to ensure that the dividend of the next mining boom is fairly returned to the people who own the resources.

I remember that, when the new tax was first mooted, people were saying: ‘Gee, the member for Hunter won’t like this. This will be bad in his electorate. He’ll be worried.’ No, people in my electorate were cheering because, while they appreciate the wealth that coalmining has brought to the valley, they also have to put up with the impact on air quality, the impact on water quality, the congestion on the roads and so on. They are so pleased that they are finally about to have a fair dividend from that mining boom returned to them. This is another reform, another initiative, that those opposite oppose. All they can do is run a scare campaign.

I see the member for Wentworth sitting at the table. He knows, just as the majority of the Australian community knows, that something has to be done to address climate change. There is emerging consensus in the community, including in coalmining electorates like the Hunter, aluminium-smelting electorates like the Hunter and coal power generation areas like the Hunter, that something has to be done about climate change. But will the coalition join us in a consensus on an issue which impacts on cost-of-living pressures on families? No, they just want to wreck, they want to run interference, they want to deny climate change exists and they want to deny climate change is human induced. They have no ideas. They are an absolute rabble. If they really want to help Australia families, they should just get out of the way. (Time expired)

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