Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I remind the Prime Minister that since December 2007 electricity prices are up by 34 per cent, water prices are up 29 per cent, gas prices are up 26 per cent and health costs are up 18 per cent. Is this not evidence that her prime ministership has been 100 wasted days on top of three wasted years? I ask the Prime Minister: why is she now going to make cost-of-living pressures worse by putting a great big carbon price on everything.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Leader of the House will resume his seat. There was a discussion about the outcome of the discussions on parliamentary reform as it related to the standing order to do with questions. I indicated yesterday that, whilst there had been no change except for the addition of the length of questions, it was my intention to make sure that standing order 100 was adhered to. On the basis of the argument that was involved in that question, it should be ruled out of order. I will allow it on this occasion, but I am indicating quite clearly that standing order 100 will be adhered to and, in the spirit of the agreement, that will not inhibit the ability of the opposition to hold the government to account.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I presume that that question was about pricing carbon and about the cost of living. On the issue of pricing carbon, I remind the Leader of the Opposition that around a year ago—in fact, it was on 2 October 2009, so the one-year anniversary of these remarks is coming up very soon—he said:

We don’t want to play games with the planet. So we are taking this issue seriously and we would like to see an ETS …

That is, an emissions trading scheme, which of course is about pricing carbon. That was Tony Abbott on 2 October 2009. On this question of pricing carbon, all I can hope is that the Tony Abbott who is with us on 2 October 2010 is the same man who made that statement, because if the Leader of the Opposition was able to show between one year and the next that he could say and believe the same thing then on 2 October 2010 presumably he would accept my invitation to work in good faith on a multiparty committee to work through options for pricing carbon. But I am not optimistic on this. I am generally an optimist, but I am not optimistic on this because, as we know, the Leader of the Opposition has had every position possible to have on pricing carbon, causing the member for Wentworth to describe him as a ‘weather vane’—you have to look out the window to work out what he believes today.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister will not debate an answer.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the question of cost of living, I am glad he has raised it because Australians have avoided the opposition leader’s ‘great big new tax on everything’, which he was intending to impose by increasing company tax that would have increased prices at shops—at Woolworths, at Coles—and it would have put a burden on working families.

What the government has done, and will continue to do, is to act to ease cost-of-living pressures on working families. That is why we have lowered tax, for example, so that a person on $50,000 a year is now paying $1,750 less in tax than they were in 2007-08—that is, 18 per cent less tax. We have increased pensions; we have introduced the education tax refund, and we are intending to extend that so that people can claim against the cost of school uniforms; we have increased the childcare tax rebate to help take the pressure off working families using child care; we have introduced the teen dental plan to help with the expensive cost of dentistry; and we as a government will introduce the promised changes to family tax benefit A to assist families with the cost of teenagers, which would increase by up to $4,000 the amount of family tax benefit that families receive; we will move to pay the child care tax rebate fortnightly; we will introduce paid parental leave from 1 January next year; we will make tax returns easier, including an automatic deduction; and we will provide tax relief for savings accounts. So any time the Leader of the Opposition wants to talk to me about cost of living I am more than happy to do so.