Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is an honour to speak on this motion. The member's motion talks about the decade of challenges. I was looking for where it acknowledges the COVID crisis which we all lived through for three years and which obviously impacted a lot of these challenges that we faced as a nation. But there was no acknowledgement of that in the motion, so I'll take that as a comment from the member for Hawke.

In detailing the activity during the 10 months of this government, the member for Hawke talks about the minimum wage increase. There is a very interesting part of the wages discussion that he has not spoken about. During the campaign, the then opposition leader and the then shadow treasurer, who are now the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, spoke a lot about real wages, but we find that, after the election, we're not getting anything from this government or from this motion about real wages. It makes you wonder why they're choosing not to talk about real wages, and the answer is that real wages are falling. In fact, the fall in real wages is the deepest fall in real wages on record. The then opposition leader, who is now the Prime Minister, talked a lot prior to the election about how he was going to get real wages moving. They don't talk about that now because they don't like the fact that real wages are going backwards.

We then move on to the second point, about cheaper child care and cheaper medicines. Again, the devil is always in the detail. They talk a lot about cheaper child care, which had bipartisan support. Everyone across the House supported this policy. But the government didn't move when, late last year, there were calls from those in the industry, from across the country, to bring forward to 1 January the rebates, to give genuine relief to Australians who were struggling then. They didn't move to bring them forward to 1 January. In fact, we had the Prime Minister in question time last week crowing about how, in a hundred days time, people would get relief. We've been in this parliament for 10 months and we've listened repeatedly to this government talking about the amazing things it's doing in child care, which have bipartisan support. But when the opportunity came to bring it forward to make a difference to Australians today—they need relief and help today, not in a hundred days time—this government wasn't there for the Australian people who needed it.

They talk about the amazing work they've done on cheaper medicines. They're happy to talk about that. But they're not prepared to talk about the mental health sessions that they have cut. Mental health sessions were at 20, and they've moved them to 10. They're very quick to go, 'That was a decision of the former government.' Guess what? You're in government. You have the ability to change that. There are plenty of things you've changed. This government were very happy to rip $100 million out of my electorate—when there was a written contract to seal roads, which had bipartisan support. They were happy to make that change. So it's pretty galling when they stand here and talk about what they're doing for health when they've ripped money out of mental health sessions.

The motion moves on to energy. Ironically, they're talking about cheaper energy, but there won't be. There's that number that the Prime Minister does not like to talk about, the $275 reduction in power bills. That promise, again, was made prior to the election. Twenty-eight times after the invasion of Ukraine, the Prime Minister, then the opposition leader, continued to make that promise. He knew he was using modelling based on December numbers. A key input was the Russian war on Ukraine, which he has acknowledged changed that. Yet he still made those changes and did not look to change his language until after the election.

We then go down to talking about responsible budgets. This is one of my favourites. Forty-five billion dollars—that's an important number. It's the amount of off-budget spending this government has committed to so that the Treasurer can stand up and talk about the responsible budget that he's delivering. It is all about spin and optics, because every dollar that they're spending is driving inflation. And there are question marks against whether any of that off-budget spending is actually going to deliver a commercial return. That's the sting in the tail for them. It has to deliver a commercial return.

So it's a great motion moved by the member for Hawke that lacks the complete details. It's all politics and spin, which is all we get from the Albanese Labor government.

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