Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fowler for raising this matter of public importance on dealing with the cost-of-living crisis. I agree with the member for Fowler that there are a lot of communities around Australia doing it tough at the moment, and a lot of people with cost-of-living pressures. I would have thought that, if you initiated a matter of public importance, you would find the time to listen to the matter of public importance, but I notice that the member for Fowler is not here. I assure her, for when she looks over the Hansard, that the Australian Labor Party is working hard to put tangible relief in the hands of all Australians. I'm not sure about the member for Fowler's seat, but there are battler parts of my electorate where we have put emphasis on the cost of living—and that's all in the context of what we inherited.

When we came into government, as I'm sure those opposite will well remember, they left us $1 trillion in Liberal debt. When we approach the job of government, obviously we are guided by that Sutton's law of social capital, that we go where the need is greatest. That's what we do. Obviously, some of those opposite go where the greed is greatest when they organise their policies. That's not what we do. We don't do the colour-coded spreadsheets organising largesse, policies with more pork than a piggery. We go where the greatest need is.

In terms of the member for Fowler's constituents, one of the things that is taking dollars out of the pockets of her constituents is inflation. There are some global issues there. I am sure you have seen the other countries and how we are doing very well compared to other G7 nations. When we came to office, inflation was running at 6.1 per cent. Today, we have effectively halved it, down to 3.4. That's good news. We didn't get a lot of questions on that in question time. I'm sure that was an oversight by the tactics committee. We had the Leader of the Opposition deputising someone to ask the home affairs minister because he was too scared to ask her any questions. Obviously you need to get inflation under control. That helps people, because otherwise it's ripping off wage earners in particular.

There are other things we need to do. We need to look after people's wallets as much as we can with wages. We have tax cuts coming through on 1 July, where 13.6 million Australian taxpayers will be better off, 84 per cent better off overall compared to the Scott Morrison tax cuts, and 90 per cent of females will be better off. I'm sure that's something the member for Fowler can tell her constituents.

When it comes to wages, we have the fastest rise in a decade. Remember all that money we gave out to the minimum wage workers, who we will support tomorrow when we make our submission to the Fair Work Commission. We have more money for aged care workers. We're doing what we can in terms of making sure that people can take home as much as possible. When it comes to health, obviously cheaper medicines, easier and cheaper to see a doctor. Then something as simple as power bills. Our plan is to build wind and solar, which is the cheapest electricity. We have signed off on 45 projects, and there are 128 queued up in the system which will give power to 2.5 million homes. Wind and solar are cheaper, I'm sure the member Fowler knows that. Obviously those opposite have promised nothing now and more expensive later. That is their policy, which I can only assume is some sort of bizarre wedge with a dollop of culture wars built in. Otherwise I don't know what is going on with those opposite. It's like they're being led by Mr Burns in a bad clown suit or something. To say that nuclear is the answer in 20 years time, when we have a cost of living crisis right now, is bizarre. Being loud and brutish is not actually leadership. Saying loudly 'Follow me' as you strike off in the wrong direction, such as nuclear, is leadership, I guess, but it's bad leadership. As the Doors song says, 'If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there', which seems to be the policy of those opposite.

We're doing lots of other things to try to deal with this: education, free TAFE, cheaper child care, expanded parental leave, housing, a whole suite of measures to help people in battling suburbs have access to housing, including 4,000 new social rental homes, $2 billion in social housing accelerator, so many great policies.

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