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

I thank the member for Cooper for her time in her career as a health professional, and I acknowledge the fact that she was the 10th president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. When you are heading a union body, wages are important, but so are real wages, and, when those opposite come in here and talk about wage increases, what they should be referring to is real wages, because real wages are going down. They are. Real wages—the take-home pay, the disposable income, of those hardworking Australians—are actually being reduced.

Now, I listened to you in silence, and you might give me the courtesy of listening to me in silence.

Sitting next to her was the Minister for Aged Care, and I acknowledge the work that she is doing in that portfolio. I acknowledge the work that she's doing in the ministry of sport. But when you go and you talk to people in aged-care centres, to those running those country aged-care centres—and I appreciate they're saying that there's going to be a wage jump for those workers tonight, and that's good—some of those workers won't have an aged-care centre to go to, because of the 24/7 nursing edict that has been placed on them by those opposite.

You get a good aged-care centre, such as the one I visited recently at Junee, and they are desperately worried that they won't be able to provide for their residents with 24/7 nursing. They can't find cleaners. They can't find cooks. They can't find people to change the beds, let alone 24/7 nursing. What are those aged-care centres supposed to do? And that is the case right over regional and, particularly, remote Australia, where aged-care centres are desperately worried.

We know that the price of groceries is going up. We know that Scott's Refrigerated Transport is going backwards; they've been placed in liquidation. I heard the member for Cooper, the assistant minister, talking about building more houses. Jolly good! But who are they going to get to build those houses—let alone the materials to build those houses? That industry is absolutely going backwards, unfortunately. It was going alright under the home ownership schemes that we put in place. But that industry, the building industry, is doing it tough at the moment, and not helped by those opposite. I listened to the Minister for Housing going on not that long ago about a million houses. Good luck building them! Good luck finding the people to actually be able to build those houses!

And then we come to students. You would think that those opposite would have placed students at the top of their expectations—at the top of their aspirations and the top of the care that they supposedly give. And yet the HECS debt is going to reach a 32-year high under those opposite. How do struggling students, such as those like Wagga Wagga's Maddison Dickinson—who still has, she says, about $6,000 to pay off on a HECS debt for partially completing a Bachelor of Paramedicine and a Bachelor of Arts—a 24-year-old, pay off her HECS debt when it's at a 32-year high? I don't know. Maybe those opposite could answer that question. Students are going to be hit with a seven-per-cent indexation rate at the beginning of June. Students are doing it tough, and all those opposite can do is to come in and say, 'Oh, well, we're bringing the budget back into surplus.' They haven't produced a surplus since 1989; Senator Claire Chandler wasn't even born the last time that Labor produced a surplus!

But the fact remains that they demonise the coal industry, they demonise the gas industry and they demonise the resources sector, which is providing the iron ore, the resources and the export cheques. Then they gloat about producing a budget surplus on the back of that resources sector—which kept us going during COVID!—and on the back of the agriculture sector, which kept us going during COVID. And they're hitting the pharmacists hard—I'll get onto that in the next speech I make in this place. But the pharmacists are doing it tough.

We have the assistant minister for regional health, a former pharmacist, belonging to a government which should know better. In some places, particularly in remote country Australia, the pharmacist is the only health professional in town. Why would you hit them so hard, to the point of closure? Why would you do that? It's all about the cost of living and they don't care! (Time expired)

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