Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

Australia is at a turning point, and the ship of state is rudderless under the weak leadership of this Prime Minister, who is more focused on accusing the Leader of the Opposition of the very division that, on his watch, the Albanese Labor government not only facilitated but allowed to fester. Worse still, the Prime Minister and Treasurer Chalmers's economic mismanagement—again, on their watch—sees Australians' living standards collapsing. Families and pensioners are struggling to make ends meet, making sacrifices just to afford the weekly shop and to cover their rent or mortgage. The Albanese Labor government's wasteful spending has driven up inflation and interest rates, resulting in the cost of mortgages, rents, power bills, groceries, insurance, health and education going up to a point most simply cannot afford. For instance, under the Albanese Labor government, a family with a typical mortgage has spent an additional $50,000 of interest since the Prime Minister came to power.

Since Mr Albanese became Prime Minister, Australian living standards have fallen further than anywhere in the developed world, by 8.7 per cent on the latest data. The International Monetary Fund projects that this year Australia will have the second-highest inflation of any developed country after the Slovak Republic. Respected economics firm Deloitte say that Australians' standard of living will not recover until at least 2030. Core inflation remains at 3.2 per cent, outside the Reserve Bank's target band of two to three per cent. Australians are experiencing the longest sustained period of inflation since the 1980s. We've been in a household recession for 21 long months. The coalition will deliver lower inflation through a stronger economy and responsible economic management. We will stop wasteful spending, reduce taxes and cut red tape, easing cost-of-living pressures for families and businesses.

Energy prices are a major driver of pressures on the cost of living and the cost of doing business. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, promised Australians some 97 times that by 2025 household energy bills would be reduced by $275. Now, in early 2025, that pledge has officially been broken. One-off relief over four quarters simply doesn't cut the mustard.

Labor is also robbing regions to buy votes in the cities. In my first term as the member for Mallee, I secured over $2 billion in funding for Mallee. Over the same three-year period, Labor has barely invested one dollar for every $20 I secured. It gets worse, Deputy Speaker. My fellow regional Victorians suffer the double whammy of two on-the-nose Labor governments, under Prime Minister Albanese and Premier Allan, who together use regional Australia as a doormat. Even when fires burned in my electorate, the Prime Minister and the Premier did a quick flyover of the Grampians. The Leader of the Opposition, on the other hand, visited fire-affected communities like Halls Gap, with me, on the ground.

Mallee is not a dumping ground for bad policy. Labor are railroading regional communities with deeply unpopular energy projects, fast-tracking approvals while their shambolic locomotive gathers steam. Mallee's regional communities are tied to the railroad tracks, screaming for their city cousins and the media that metropolitan Australians rely on to pay attention before it is too late. Thankfully, Whycheproof-raised Peta Credlin, on Sky News, is raising the alarm on the national stage. Labor's deeply unpopular energy plans have been exposed as costing $600 billion, according to Frontier Economics, compared with $263 billion under the coalition—44 per cent cheaper.

Sunraysia, Mallee and regional Australia deserve a fair go from Canberra, and I expect a return to government with the Nationals will get the country back on track.

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