Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Fenner is not a bad chap, but I do not like being lectured to by somebody who only has a capital city intent and who comes to this place just wanting to push his capital city barrow, and country people do not like that either. When he talks about the issues that he raised in this matter of public importance, there was no discussion about regional Australia. There was no thought given to how tough people in regional Australia were doing. Dare I say there are truly people in Fenner higher paid—and good luck to them—than in the average electorate in country Australia. But the fact is they are doing it tough in country Australia and in the regions, and this government has continually failed to address those issues.

What we've heard from this government, in the eight or so months that it's been in, are such things as who's going to appear on the $5 note and whether we're going to have an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. I recognise this is an important issue. I'm glad the member for Lingiari is here, and I acknowledge the representation that she does for that fine electorate—which would not have been an electorate but for the person standing right here at the dispatch box, I have to say, because I know what regional representation is about. I know how tough it is for regional Australians to perhaps even sometimes see their member.

I heard the member for Fenner talking about electric cars and their capacity of about 100 kilometres and which was cheaper—electric or petrol. In some instances the cars that he wants us to drive only go 100 kilometres. But, in regional Australia, that's just a trip to the shops or to the doctor for some. What he doesn't realise—I heard him talking about tilting at windmills—is that we've got quite a few windmills in the member for Hume's electorate. I wonder how many windmills creating energy are in the member for Fenner's electorate. It's easy to come to this place and lecture everybody when your own electorate—which is all of 238 square kilometres—doesn't have the capacity to create the energy, the food and the fibre. It's all well and good to represent those people—public servants and, no doubt, fine citizens of Australia as they are. But don't come into this place and start lecturing us about addressing the issue that you should be addressing, and that is cost of living.

It is true: the cost of living has gone up since Labor took office. We hear all the time of those opposite railing against the debt. We hear them articulating this figure which just isn't true. It's nowhere near true. There's not a trillion dollars of debt; it's nowhere near that. And they ask, 'What did we get for the debt that we're in?' I'll tell you what we got for the debt that we are in—and we were in debt. We got 55,000 Australian lives saved, because of the measures that we put in place through COVID-19.

I sometimes think that those opposite have forgotten about the fact that we were in a global pandemic, the fact that this was a worldwide virus. None of those members opposite were in those meetings when we were being told by the Chief of Defence and by the Chief Medical Officer how drastic this was. This was a health crisis. This was a national security concern. We addressed those issues, and we addressed them superbly, to a point where we actually did save lives and hundreds of thousands of jobs and many businesses. We kept the doors of businesses open. We kept the economy going.

The member for Fenner talks about the jobs and what's been created since Labor took office. That's because of the good position, the good policies that were there when they took office in May last year: 1.1 million jobs created since the pandemic hit. And I remember when James Kwan lost his life on 1 March 2020. It was awful—awful for his family, awful in terms of the crisis that was about to confront the country. Yet, despite that, during COVID there was tax relief for 11½ million Australians, all benefitting from the coalition policies. There were 700,000 jobs saved. And 71.3 per cent of trade and exports were covered by free trade agreements. When we came to office it was at the 20 per cent mark.

What we did was make sure that we put the economic parameters in place so that this nation could be its best self, so that this nation could succeed. What this government now needs to do is address the cost-of-living pressures on Australians, on first home buyers, on families struggling to make ends meet.

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