Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Workforce Incentive) Bill 2022. At the outset I will say that, on the face of it, the government supports this bill, with a second reading amendment calling on the government to increase the work bonus to $600 a fortnight from 1 July 2023. This is, yet again, a bill whereby essentially the government is copying some good ideas from the coalition, both when we were in government and now whilst we are in opposition.

I want to talk a little about the good people of Fisher. Fisher is still regarded as a rural seat. Some people might find that a little bit hard to believe, with the great places of Mooloolaba, Kawana—I know the member for Braddon is having a bit of a chuckle, but we have significant farming and agricultural pursuits in the good seat of Fisher. We have a great deal of strawberry farmers, pineapple farmers and macadamia nut farmers. We have cattle farmers, like the good member for Braddon sitting here at the box. He's not the only cattle farmer in the country, although he pretends he is; he might say he's the best! But the good people of Fisher are a very good growing, agriculture community, and I'm very proud to represent them.

But what a lot of my farming constituents are telling me—and in fact a lot of business people—is that they just cannot get staff. We're seeing cafes closing. We're seeing cafes open for only certain hours of the day. We're seeing many businesses where the business owners are absolutely being pushed to the point of exhaustion because they are having to work longer and longer hours because they just simply can't get staff. We're seeing the destruction of crops because they can't be picked.

These are very real issues, and when you look at the No. 1 burning issue that's troubling Australians at the moment it is of course cost of living. Australians are really feeling the pinch right now. When we find a situation where employers can't get the workers that they need to be able to run their businesses, we're heading towards dangerous times in this country. It is just so incredibly important that, as a parliament, we look at all avenues to try to free up that labour marketplace to get as many people as we possibly can into employment. Those who might be listening to this—thank you!—and who are at an age where they've retired may not want to work, and that's fine. But equally, many people who are on the age pension or veterans pensions, who are certainly on a fixed incomes, with the rising cost of living, are having trouble making ends meet. And that is axiomatic. We know from the budget just last week that our electricity prices are set to increase by 56 per cent over the next two years. Gas prices—and these are figures based on the government's own numbers—are tipped to increase by 44 per cent over the next two years. The price of diesel is absolutely out of this world at the moment. Petrol is around $1.75 a litre on the Sunshine Coast. Diesel, for some unbelievably unknown reason, is somewhere around $2.35 or $2 40 a litre.

If you're a retired person who might enjoy going up to Fraser Island on occasion, as many people in Fisher do, then you probably own a four-wheel drive—a diesel four-wheel drive—and you're paying $2.35 a litre to put diesel in it. These cost-of-living pressures are set to increase and to increase significantly. So, as I said, we need to do everything we can in this place as an opposition to work collaboratively with the government to try to ease the cost of living for Australian families. I recently did my 'Tour de Fisher', where I rode my pushbike around the electorate—in lycra, I might add—for my state colleagues. I have to say that almost every person I met—

See this speech in context