Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much. He's new, Mr Speaker. He's new to the job. In Veterans' Affairs, there were 60,000 people waiting for payments that they had earned due to their service for our country. People died waiting to get entitlements that they deserved. That's before we get to the human impact of the robodebt scheme.

A thousand days ago, we inherited a crisis in skills—the worst skills shortage in 50 years. We inherited inflation that was rising. We inherited wages that were falling. We inherited a crisis in health, with Medicare bulk-billing in freefall. We inherited a crisis in the NDIS, with rorting and rip-offs and packages being cut. We inherited a fiscal crisis, with a trillion dollars in debt and deficits, including $78 billion being forecast in that first year. We inherited a crisis in accountability as well after the Prime Minister had sworn himself into multiple portfolios, in some cases without anyone knowing, including the bloke he shared a house with at the Lodge. The Treasurer didn't know that there was another Treasurer. It was extraordinary!

That was the chaos that we inherited from those opposite. There were no cabinet processes, just overheads in the cabinet room. We inherited a crisis in energy and an ageing grid, with four gigs out and one gig in. And we inherited a crisis in our immigration system presided over by those opposite—a crisis exposed by three separate reports.

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