Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Prior to the last election, Prime Minister Albanese promised that mortgages would be lower and energy bills would be reduced by $275. In fact, everything was supposed to get easy. Can I say that in my electorate of La Trobe it's tough. It is really tough. Families are doing it tough, especially in the growth corridor that includes areas like Clyde North, Pakenham and Officer, where we're having all of these new houses built. The average mortgage has gone up an incredible $35,000 in one year, so people have to come up somehow with $35,000, and it is super tough. I can't see things, sadly, improving in the near future.

When it comes to inflation, which is what's causing the rise in interest rates, Australia's inflation is worse than that of the US, Singapore, Germany, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy, South Korea, Canada, France and the entire euro area. What makes it worse is Labor's weak economic management, including an extra $315 billion in spending, a 5.4 per cent fall in productivity and their renewables-only emergency policies. Under Labor, prices have increased by 10 per cent for many essential items. Housing is up 12 per cent, rent is up 12 per cent and insurance is up a massive 26 per cent. Can I just say how difficult that is, especially for small business. I'm hearing this all the time. I was speaking the other day to a gentleman, one of my Indian friends, Nav, who owns Star Motorworks, and he was saying his business has been broken into twice over the weekend. On one occasion, I think, $60,000 worth of items were stolen. He said it's happening in the whole area. You can imagine what that means when it comes to getting insurance renewed. Premiums rise, and it's just going to get worse and worse. Electricity is up 18 per cent when it was supposed to come down, as Prime Minister Albanese announced on, I think, 85 occasions when he was opposition leader. Gas is up 25 per cent.

When it comes to rents, why are rents increasing? When you look at immigration, Labor's making the housing crisis much worse by bringing in 1.67 million migrants over five years. In terms of the houses being constructed at the moment, there's only one premises being built for every five migrants coming in. So, again, in my electorate of La Trobe, it's making it exceptionally difficult. When I went down to Casey Hospital and spoke to the nurses there, I asked them how are they were going bringing in overseas nurses. They said that that was not the big issue; it was actually trying to find accommodation for them.

I know some migration agents were kind of excited when Labor first came to power. Under Home Affairs and the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, all these education visas were being quickly approved. They thought it was fantastic. They said, 'These are all being approved.' The same migration agents are now saying to me, 'It's a horror show.' The reason is that, out of the roughly 2,400 migration agents and certified lawyers—when I was assistant minister in the Home Affairs portfolio I looked after the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority, whose job it is to look after registered migration agents—700 notices have gone out to migration agents and lawyers in cases where someone has maybe applied for a humanitarian visa or it's been found that a student visa was issued based on false documentation. What they've found out, in hindsight, is that when the Liberals and the coalition were in government the checks and balances would have been done before the person arrived to make sure that there was no false documentation. Now the onus has been reversed to put it on the education agent and the migration agents to have done the checks beforehand. So we've now got over 700 of these notices being served. And, if you look now, Labor has banned students from certain states in India from making applications. The states are Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Kashmir, to name a few. Can I say that the Indian community is outraged by this.

Now, when things are tough, we have $172 million being spent on advertising campaigns—stage 3 tax cuts, the ute tax. People would have seen them at bus stops, on the radio and on YouTube. This is on top of the $450 million that was wasted on the failed referendum.

What really annoys me is this: in the 2022 budget, the Albanese government cut $50 million from the safer communities program for high-risk youth. This was a program we put in place under the previous government. My background is in the police force, and I got to see troubled youth. Those kids, who find it really tough to stay at school, are all around the country. Under this program that we put in place, grassroots organisations and groups could apply for funding of up to $1.5 million over three years. It really helped. There were three criteria: firstly, to keep kids in school; secondly, if they'd left school, to find them education or training to get a job; and, thirdly, if they're in youth detention, to have a mentoring program before they came out to make sure that they didn't go back to gangs et cetera. It was a ripper program. One hundred and thirty-three applicants were funded. Sadly, the program has been cut for all of these organisations right around the country. Parents of youngsters who had been going down the wrong path in life and who had been receiving very special support from youth workers or being kept at school with teachers are devastated. I remember Les Twentyman's program. Sadly, Les passed away this year. Les appeared before the inquiry I chaired that resulted in the report No one teaches you to become an Australian. Les said, if you want to make a difference for youth, put money into youth workers. I think that 30 per cent of applicants to the program were from Indigenous communities. So all of that has been scrapped. Like I said, we have money being spent on an advertising campaign, $172 million, to tell us why the stage 3 tax cuts are good and why the zero tax plan is good and we're cutting $50 million from helping our youth. Where are the government's priorities? In La Trobe we had the Officer train station car park cancelled—$15 million. That's gone. Sadly, $650,000 had already been spent on the design and planning of that car park.

The Narre Warren car park in the seat of Bruce, $15 million, was scrapped in 2022. Narre Warren is a very fast-growing area in the seat of Bruce. I congratulate our candidate, Zahid Safi, an Afghan. He's a great guy and he's been out and about. He couldn't believe it when I told him, 'You know what, there's supposed to be a car park going here and it's been cancelled.' It's just a shame. I caught the train for 17 years when I was in the police force. You just want to get to the train station, park your car and get on the train. Down in Narre Warren, they have to drive everywhere; it's an absolute crying shame.

Then we had Wellington Road upgrade and, again, $110 million was ripped out of the budget in 2022. I acknowledge the member for Casey. Wellington Road is a very dangerous road. As a former police officer, I looked at the statistics and, sadly, there have been 72 serious collisions in the last five years. I've had people send me emails when family members have tragically died on that road. It is a dangerous road. The ridiculous situation was that I went to three councils—Casey Council, Yarra Ranges Council and Cardinia Shire Council—to get an estimate of how much it would cost to duplicate this road from Glenfern Road right up to Clematis, about 25 to 30 kilometres. I don't think there are many telephone poles around there. There are no gutters. They said the top estimate would be $220 million, so we decided to go halves with $110 million. Then the state Labor government came along and said, 'No, it's actually going to be $900 million.' That was an insane price increase, so that was scrapped.

One of the points about Wellington Road is we had the Ash Wednesday bushfires back in 1981. Cockatoo was devastated in those bushfires. Lives were lost. Wellington road is the main escape route there and it is still a single road. We haven't had major fires up in the Dandenong for many years. We had the Bunyip Road fire a number of years ago which wasn't too bad and we were very fortunate with the Black Saturday bushfires. I know that the member for Casey raised this with the CFA when it was pointed out to him. If there is a fire there and trees fall over the road and the road is blocked, you've got gutters on the side which are sometimes a metre deep where people can get trapped. If there's a fire there, many lives will be lost. So it's not only a dangerous road when it comes to traffic but also a very dangerous road when it comes to bushfires.

The Sealing the Hills project was $300 million to Yarra Ranges Council and Cardinia Council. Can I say how unfair it is that people are living in the Dandenong Ranges on dirt roads and, if there's a fire there, some of guttering on the side could be a metre deep. We started that program in partnership with the councils and also a local residents payment scheme. That program was going to seal 164 roads in La Trobe. It was already under way. It was doing great. What happened? Again, Labor came in, scrapped the funding and are now putting it to Daniel Andrews' rail project, which I think is going to cost $200 million. It's an absolute crying shame.

A project which did survive was the Clyde Road upgrade, an extra lane from the train line to across the Monash freeway. Again, I've got the estimates from Casey Council. It was going to cost $70 million to build. Then state Labor came back and said, 'No it will be $250 million.' We then had a review for 18 months. I have no idea why the transport minister, the member for Ballarat, put this in place. All of the workers left, everything stopped, but I was hearing they were still getting paid. That road project is now in the vicinity of $250 million. The same happened with the Pakenham Road upgrades from McGregor Road and Racecourse Road. So all the workers went off again, I think for another 18 months. They're all back there again; I see the CFMEU flags up there. But, again, local council estimated that project to be $70 million, and it blew out to $400 million.

So it's really tough out there for residents in La Trobe and right across the country. I've been to many budget speeches, in both government and opposition, and I can say that you could tell it wasn't a good budget when the Labor staff members came into the gallery. It was very subdued, because they knew it was not hitting the mark at all. Looking at the response by opposition leader Peter Dutton, people are agreeing that we need change. And I hear Labor member agreeing, too, and I thank you for that. We need change, and it has to come quickly. Bring this election on.

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