Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was interested in the comments of the member for Forde about almost a trillion dollars' worth of debt and not being at all concerned about that.

We know that Australian families are doing it tough—there's certainly no doubt about that; I talked about poverty in my first speech the other night—and today's decision by the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates by 50 basis points will only make things tougher for Australian households. I know that families of Boothby are doing it tough. I know that because, over 10 months, they told me about it and, over the last two months, as their member, they're continuing to tell me about it. You only have to set foot in a supermarket or a pharmacy to see that the cost of essentials has gone up.

The Albanese government is going to level with the Australian people. We will be honest with them about the challenges that lie ahead—challenges that were left to us by those opposite, who have wasted nine years racking up almost a trillion dollars in debt so far with far too little to show for it. We also face challenges internationally and domestically. We understand the global inflationary pressures stemming from the conflict in Europe and disrupted supply chains due to the ongoing pandemic. We also know that the recent floods that have ravaged the east coast of Australia have added to higher food prices. It's clear that high inflation is hurting everyday Australians in Boothby and beyond, and this is made worse because, as the members for Hawke and Reid so eloquently described, it follows a decade of stagnant wages growth—deliberately low wages.

Unfortunately, there isn't a quick fix to fight inflation. In fact, the previous government failed to prepare the country for these tough economic times. Our challenge—the challenge facing Australian households and households across Boothby—has been made tougher by almost a decade of missed opportunities and wrong priorities. But while we know it is tough right now, the Albanese Labor government is already going about the hard work of delivering the policies and reforms that will put long-term downward pressure on the cost-of-living issues.

In my electorate of Boothby, one of the key drivers of rising costs of living that I heard about was the skyrocketing costs for health care under the previous government. During the life of the previous government, out-of-pocket costs to see a GP in Boothby went up by 35 per cent. Labor has a plan to rein in these price increases and ease pressures on household budgets by investing in our health system. Opening a Medicare urgent care clinic in Bedford Park to take pressure off emergency departments will make it easier to see a GP. We're cutting the cost of medicines and making more older Australians, including many of those in my area, eligible for the Commonwealth seniors health card. Labor has a plan to drive down the cost of child care for families in Boothby. Under our plan for cheaper child care, 96 per cent of Australian families using child care will be better off. That's 1.26 million families. We're implementing our plan to fix almost 10 years of neglect from those opposite when it comes to skills, resulting in a skills crisis that I hear about wherever I go in Boothby. Every small business I speak to talks to me about the lack of skilled labour and the impact that has on their ability to do their business. We're getting on with getting more renewable energy into our energy system to lower prices, cut emissions and drive economic growth into the future. Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy.

As the Treasurer said in his statement to the House last week, the task before this new Labor government is a serious one, and what I hear from people in Boothby is that they respect his honesty, his straight talking and his clarity when he tells them what is actually happening and what the future will look like. After nine years of waste and mismanagement, there's a lot of work to do. There is a trillion dollars of debt and rising interest rates. Wages have been deliberately kept low. But we are setting out to do the hard work of reforming our economy—the hard work of implementing productivity-boosting reforms that will truly change our nation and deliver a better future for all of us.

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