Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under the Liberal government, 2021 will be the most expensive year on record for millions of Australian families. We are a trillion dollars in debt, but the cost of living for working families is going up. The Morrison recession is putting real financial pressure on too many working Australians. Next year the rate of JobKeeper will drop and then in March it will be ripped away. JobSeeker is going down on 1 January 2021, back to $40 a day. Childcare fees went up 7.2 per cent last year, and this government has no plan to make it more affordable in 2021. Australian universities are going to have their highest fees on record in 2021, with some fees going up 113 per cent. And in the middle of all of that another 160,000 Australians will lose their jobs between now and Christmas.

We know that those opposite have no plans, but do any of their Liberal counterparts in the states have a plan? We know the New South Wales Liberals want to increase the GST to 15 per cent, and in my home state of Western Australia we have Liza Harvey, the leader who wanted to hand billions of dollars to Clive Palmer, the leader who wanted to privatise Western Power. The only thing that Liza Harvey has achieved in her life is sending TAFE fees up 510 per cent, and she doesn't even want to give Western Australian families $600 for their power bills.