Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy Affordability) Share this | Hansard source

Electricity and gas bills are up, grocery bills are up, petrol prices are up and mortgage repayments and rents are up, yet today the Albanese Labor government were out patting themselves on the back when it came to electricity prices.

The reality is that people in Western Sydney have been paying 37 per cent more on their bills since the Albanese Labor government came into power. The relief expected from the energy regulator on the market default offer that came in today would have had to have been cut by $1,000 for the reality of the $275 cut promised by the Albanese Labor government to come to fruition. But it didn't happen; it didn't happen at all.

People are really struggling out there. Congratulating yourselves and patting yourselves on the back while people are doing it so tough is absolutely extraordinary, because we are once again in the Albanese Labor government's economic mess. It's taken just two years to trash our economy and send us hurtling towards another spiral in the depths of our cost-of-living crisis.

Now everyday Australians right up and down the coasts of Australia, inland, in the regions and particularly in Western Sydney, my patch, are facing a per capita recession. This means economic growth per person is going backwards in this country. For families, this means they are facing a recession. The Prime Minister, many times, committed to the public at the election that he would ensure—he actually said, 'I promise you: you are going to be better off under us.' Instead, the cost of living, the standard of living, in this country is going backwards. People in Penrith, Fairfield, Parramatta and Liverpool are all hurting under the economic policies of this government. We need a coalition government to deliver the right policy settings to move our country in the right direction.

Since Labor took office, we've had higher taxes, higher inflation and lower productivity. Consumer confidence is down, and you know this. Just walk into a cafe—I do this all the time with small businesses in my electorate—and ask, 'How is business going?' They say: 'Customers are just not coming through the door. We are threatened with closing every single day.' I get contacted by small-business operators saying yet another small business has closed. Whether in retail, hospitality or manufacturing, small businesses are closing their doors because they just can't afford to stay open under this Labor government.

We're seeing mums and dads selling their family home because they can't afford the tripling of interest payments on their mortgage. And we know, because it's happening in every single electorate in this country, that for the first time families on double incomes are lining up at food banks. I've been to schools in my local electorate and given grants to them so they can have a fridge and shelves in their schools—pantries to put food in—so kids can be fed during the day because parents are struggling to give them breakfast and lunch for school. This should not be happening in our country.

In Western Sydney, we know that we are just buckling under the weight of the government's migration program, especially when billions of dollars have been slashed from our infrastructure and transport projects. We simply cannot keep up with the demand to live in our region without adequate support to ensure our roads, our trains, our metros, our schools, our hospitals and our employment hubs are able to cope with a rising population. I'm not surprised that people want to live in Western Sydney. We are an aspirational community, and we have a new international airport which creates so many local jobs, so kids don't have to travel out of the area for a job. But, while the planes might be taking off, you can't get to that airport because the infrastructure on the roads has been cut by government—billions of dollars cut.

In terms of mortgages, the Reserve Bank board has met 19 times since Labor came to office, and it has increased interest rates 12 times. Again, the government is patting itself on the back and saying, 'Oh, but today they didn't do that.' But there have been 12 interest rate rises. This is why people are struggling so much under this Labor Prime Minister.

Talking about taxes, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy wants to put a tradie tax in place. People in my community are going to love this! Tradies on the road will not be able to afford the cost of their utes and the cost of transport to get to their jobs. This cost-of-living crisis is impacting so many Australians. It's time for Labor to wake up and create policies to fix their mess.

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