Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australians are doing it tough. Right around the country there are families that are seeing the cost of their groceries go up, the cost of their fuel go up, in many cases their real wages go down and their housing costs go through the roof. Nowhere in my electorate do I see this more poignantly than in the streets of Harris Park. In Harris Park there is a beautiful community of some of the most generous people you will ever meet. A shop in Harris Park called Jaipur Sweets is run by a gentleman called Narinder Singh. Every Tuesday evening they offer free meals to anybody who needs those meals. It can be anybody who happens to be there on the day or anybody who has a desire for a meal that night. They do it irrespective of religion, need or location. They just provide a free meal. This is an important element of the Sikh faith—to provide a meal to those in need. I have noticed over recent weeks and months that the line outside of Jaipur Sweets every Tuesday night has been getting a little bit longer. Every week there are more people in need, more people who can't make ends meet and more people who need that element of community support. That speaks to the challenge that so many families in Australia are facing to make ends meet.

People in this situation don't want slogans and they don't want political lines; they want real solutions. They want solutions that will help bring down the cost of living, that will provide targeted support to those in need and that will address the very real housing crisis that they face. Unfortunately, what we have in this cost-of-living debate right now is a government that is consistently proposing solutions to those challenges and an opposition who are seeking to weaponise those challenges.

In fact, every time we get a piece of unfortunate news about the economy, instead of seeking to propose real solutions, the opposition rubs their hands with glee because, rather than actually fix any of these problems, their real desire is to politicise them in the hope that the challenges that Australian families face—challenges created by the hangover of COVID-19, supply chain bottlenecks and the war in Ukraine—can be connected to the government. They're hoping Australians feel more pain, to serve their political strategy. That's why, every time we've proposed solutions to those real challenges that Australians face, the opposition haven't voted for them and haven't proposed to amend or improve them; they've just tried to block them. In area after area that matters to Australians, we've had nothing more from those opposite than blocking and saying no.

Think about health. Health is an area of very significantly rising costs for so many Australian families. Over the last 12 months, the health CPI has increased by nearly five per cent. It's particularly difficult for families and seniors who might have multiple prescriptions and sick kids. The cost is going up and up. The availability of bulk-billing doctors is going down and down. Over the period of the coalition government, the cost of health care in Australia, measured by the health CPI, increased by 37 per cent. They would have you believe that this is a recent phenomenon, something created by the Albanese government. But, in fact, they increased health costs in this country by 37 per cent over the period from 2013 to 2022.

Those costs are still rising, and that's why we've taken significant action in order to bring them down. That's why we introduced cheaper medicines for Australians, reducing the cost of medicines that affect so many people, particularly those with chronic illness. That's why we introduced 60-day prescribing so that people don't have to go to the GP so frequently and don't have to pay so many fees to get the medicines that they need. Instead of proposing alternative solutions or supporting these solutions, the opposition have just opposed, because the pain that families feel in the healthcare arena is something that they don't want to address; they want to capitalise on it for their own political benefits. That's why they're opposing the 60-day prescriptions and that's why they're not proposing any alternative solutions.

The next example is energy. How many Australian families have struggled with the rising cost of energy over the last 12 months? Opening those bills, getting that bill shock and seeing the price of electricity and gas go through the roof—it's been painful for so many families. Again, this isn't a new problem. Energy costs have been rising for some time. In fact, in the last quarter of the coalition government, energy prices were rising by 6.3 per cent quarter on quarter. That is one of the highest increases of any item in the CPI. And they were rising so quickly because of lots of international factors, the failure of the coalition government to invest at all in new electricity supply and their shunning of renewables and modern sources of energy supply. That led to an enormous build-up of pressure in the system that was accentuated by the war in Ukraine.

Now, in the most recent quarter, that CPI increase in energy has gone down from 6.3 per cent to minus 1.2 per cent. That energy CPI of 6.3, which was left by the previous government in their last quarter, has gone down, in the most recent quarter of the Albanese government, to minus 1.2—a really terrific turnaround for many Australians who are experiencing very rapidly rising prices. It doesn't mean that all that increase has gone away, but it has stopped increasing at the rate that it was increasing when those opposite left power. Why is it coming down? It's coming down because the government took the problem seriously, chose to provide targeted and direct support to those families who need it most and decided to cap gas prices to make sure that gas was available at a reasonable price to Australian families and industries. And we can see the effect of this action in the numbers: 6.3 down to negative 1.2.

And again, instead of supporting those solutions or proposing alternative solutions—

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