Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's always an entertaining session from the member for Riverina. What I think it shows is that the opposition are either living in a dream world or their eyes and ears are just permanently shut. It's a real shame, because if they opened their eyes, if they were listening to what's happening on this side of the House or on the television, they'd be able to see that the Albanese Labor government is focused and absolutely committed to providing Australians with stability, confidence and security.

Apart from that small tidbit of the budget absolutely heaving with a trillion dollars of Liberal Party debt—which we are working responsibly to repair—we also have the challenge of combating inflation. The Albanese Labor government's plan to combat the challenge of inflation is providing cost-of-living relief—cheaper child care, cheaper medicines, repairing our broken supply chains which have exacerbated our inflation challenges, and showing some spending restraint and economic maturity. That's something that the Liberal Party seem to know absolutely nothing about, yet you hear them raving on the television and raving in this chamber about how they're superior economic managers. It beggars belief and makes me laugh.

I'm glad members are here. I'm glad they're all gathered around. Let's just examine a small part of the path that this shameful Liberal and National coalition has taken—a path where they have turned their back on the Australian people. They're an opposition who every question time will have a question relating to energy, yet didn't support the energy bill relief for vulnerable Australians. They're an opposition who believe that our manufacturing should be done offshore and, therefore, an opposition who doesn't back Australian industry. They're an opposition who doesn't back research, doesn't back Australian science, doesn't back Australian innovation and doesn't back Australian know-how. Even more devastatingly, they're an opposition who don't back Australians. Imagine being the so-called alternative government of this country and not backing the people that you came here to represent. They're an opposition who don't support housing for our people, like for women over the age of 50—the fastest-growing group of homeless people in this country. They're not backing housing policy for Indigenous people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. They're not backing a housing policy for our veteran community—people who have put their lives on the line for this nation to preserve our sovereignty—and for those fleeing family and domestic violence.

Let's quickly go through what our government—the Albanese Labor government—is doing for the Australian people. We're providing an increase in the minimum wage, a pay rise for aged-care workers and cheaper early childhood education for millions of Australians, including thousands in my electorate on the Central Coast. That's because Labor know the importance of ensuring children get good foundations in their education. We know that this will ensure that people who want to re-enter the workforce can. Most importantly, it is a targeted, responsible cost-of-living measure. We're providing 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave, because no-one should have to choose between going to work and their safety. We convened a Jobs and Skills Summit and established Jobs and Skills Australia. We've finally ended the cashless debit card. We expanded the Commonwealth seniors health card. We established a Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme. This one I'm particularly proud of: we passed a climate change bill and updated Australia's climate change targets.

We are now advancing a voice to parliament—constitutional recognition for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters, and a voice. We're not talking about people outside the parliament making decisions for the nation. We are simply asking the people who actually live with the issues at hand, who actually truly represent the communities we are discussing, to help us understand their perspectives of the issues and how they affect them. We don't and shouldn't profess to know everything about everything. The most powerful piece of knowledge is knowing when you are missing key information. It's the idea that consulting people with lived experience, and therefore expert knowledge, is what matters.

We're repairing international relations and establishing an anticorruption commission, and that's what the Albanese Labor government is about.

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