Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to make a contribution in the grievance debate. Too many ordinary Australians are struggling to get ahead each week, living pay cycle to pay cycle, and it feels like this government just doesn't care. Instead of fixing the rising cost of living and attending to wages, they're telling my constituents that spending $112 a day on child care per child per day is the best that they can offer as a federal government and that they will have to choose between a comfortable retirement or buying a house because it is simply impossible to have both. To buy a house and to support your family, and to keep up with the cost of living day to day, whilst trying to tuck away some money for savings as well, are pretty simple aspirations. But, just recently, the LNP in Queensland polled my constituents in Lilley and suggested to us in that poll that tax concessions given to investment property owners are the only way to keep rents low. That's their plan to improve housing affordability—to continue to inflate the housing property market and hope that wealthy investors keep rents low out of the goodness of their hearts. It is completely out of touch with the struggle.

We hear today that, in the LNP party room in Canberra, a group of men shamed Australian women who use child care. One coalition MP reportedly labelled child care as 'outsourcing parenting'. Another said that affordable child care could force women back to work—as if women have to be forced back to work. Is it 2021 or 1951 in the LNP party room? It's really hard to know.

In one year, the Prime Minister's LNP mate, the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Adrian Schrinner, has spent $6.5 million on advertising and self-promotion. He's spent $1.6 million marketing and advertising the Brisbane metro project, which hasn't even been started yet. Marketing and spin—it's all about the announcements; it's not about the follow-through. And the problem is: you can't spin reality. You can't spin what it feels like on the ground in our suburbs. Northsiders know that, a lot of the time, their day-to-day lives just don't match up with the outlook that this government is portraying from Canberra.

While the rest of the world makes huge strides towards combating climate change, the best that this government can offer is a man who has famously live-streamed himself ranting in a paddock about how climate change is attributable to a higher power. A hundred and twenty countries, 70 per cent of our trading partners and every state and territory in the country have signed up to net zero emissions by 2050. The Business Council of Australia, the National Farmers' Federation, the Australian Industry Group, the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association have all signed up to net zero emissions by 2050; our biggest banks have; our biggest airlines have; our biggest resource companies have; and our largest exporters all support the net zero target, because they understand that Australia can become a clean energy superpower, leading to stronger economic growth and more jobs, while remaining a global resources and trading powerhouse.

But where is the Morrison government on this? They're busy arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, making it look like they take climate change seriously, while our regional areas burn and while reefs in our coastal waters are bleached. This government appears to be fundamentally anti science. They disregard all expert evidence, even when it comes from their own departments. They've scrounged up 22 different energy policies in eight years, wrecking business confidence, slashing jobs and causing energy prices to skyrocket.

Australians are sick of huge electricity bills, sick of policy chaos and sick of the Morrison government putting Australian jobs, exports and the economy in jeopardy, all for short-term political gain. Only the Australian Labor Party has committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and backed it up with a plan that will create new jobs, not cut them. Labor knows that acting on climate change and protecting our environment isn't just an economic imperative; it's a moral one as well. I thank the House.

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