Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Hume proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

This Government's failure to deliver on their commitments to the Australian people on cost of living and energy prices.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister a moment ago was very keen to talk about tests, but the real question here is: what was the test for the budget? We laid this out very clearly in the lead-up to the budget, and it was to build on the strong economic and budgetary position inherited by those opposite to address those challenges that are bearing down on Australians. We know that absolutely at the top of that list is the cost of living. We also know that it's absolutely essential for all Australians that over the medium to longer term we see strong economic growth and a robust economy which creates opportunities for all Australians and allows them to realise their aspirations. But on any measure, Labor failed that test last night.

Just before the election, the Prime Minister told Australians that they will be better off under a Labor government—no ambiguity, no asterisk, no footnotes. In fact, based on their numbers in the budget, by Christmas, the typical Australian family will be at least $2,000 worse off.

An opposition member: How much?

Two thousand dollars worse off by Christmas. The budget fails Australian families at exactly the time they need a clear and comprehensive plan to deal with the cost-of-living pressures they are facing.

Now, the budget confirms a number of things. Firstly, the cost of living is going up. Secondly, electricity and gas bills are going up. Electricity bills are going up by 20 per cent this year and 30 per cent next year—56 per cent over two years. Gas bills are going up by 40 per cent over two years. Thirdly, tax payments are going up. Fourthly, government spending is going up. Fifthly, employment will go down;150,000 jobs are going to be shed. Finally—there's more on the list, but this will do for now—real wages are going down in this election cycle.

An opposition member: A typical bread-and-butter Labor budget.

This was a bread-and-butter Labor budget—there's no doubt about that. It was a big spending, big taxing, traditional Labor budget that delivers everything to government and nothing to the Australian people. So much so, we know there are going to be 20,000 additional public servants. That is the contribution being made to the bread and butter of Australian households. That's not how we're going to deal with the cost-of-living crisis in this country. The budget that the Treasurer handed down last night has no credible plan to deal with those challenges that Australians are dealing with in their households.

Back in July, the Treasurer delivered a ministerial statement to this House. There was a lot of forecasting and a lot of commentary, but what he did say in that statement was that he wanted to paint a picture for the Australian people. Well, we now know what the picture is. It is a self-portrait! All this time he was painting a picture for himself—just a big oil painting of the Treasurer. And that's what we got in the budget last night. There was nothing else of substance. As the Treasurer leads the Labor Party through the desert and into this fiscal nirvana, the prime ministership is waiting for him on a mountain top, and he's getting rid of his rivals day by day—several of them going by the wayside.

That 50 per cent increase in electricity prices—how did that get into the budget papers? There are a lot of questions to answer here. But what we do know is that this was a vanity project for the Treasurer. It should have been about Australians—Australian families, Australian pensioners and hardworking Australian small businesses. They will pay the price for the self-indulgence of this Treasurer and for the lack of a coherent and comprehensive plan to get through to Christmas and deal with those cost-of-living pressures that all Australians are facing. This budget was all about the Treasurer.

There were a number of very significant broken promises in this budget. It confirms that electricity and gas prices are expected rise sharply over the next two years—56 per cent for electricity prices and maybe 40 per cent for gas prices. The promise that Labor made for a $275 electricity price reduction is gone. In fact, the Treasurer confirmed today that it's not in the budget. He misheard, but after clarification it was very clear it is not in the budget anywhere, because it has absolutely gone—like something out of George Orwell, you wipe it out of the documents! The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister Burke, said on 15 June: 'People will be seeing in their bank accounts what the change of government means.' Well, he was right. This a commitment he will keep. This is a commitment they will keep because they will be seeing in their bank accounts exactly what this government means, which is a higher cost of living—more taxes, higher electricity bills and Australians being worse off.

More broadly on cost of living, the Prime Minister said: 'Australian families know that the price and cost of everything is going up—food, petrol, housing. Everything is going up except for the wages.' It's clear that he was talking about his future government because that is exactly what we are seeing around us right now. There were other broken promises.

Those of us who were here in 2019 will remember the debate in this place and in the election campaign about franking credits. On 4 March 2022, that's this year, when asked whether or not he was going to change taxation around franking credits, on ABC Perth mornings the Prime Minister said, 'We're not touching them.' On 30 March 2021, an earlier stage, on ABC Radio AM, he said: 'We won't have any changes to the franking credit regime.' Then the Treasurer on 17 January 2022 said, 'We won't be doing franking credits.' He might have misheard. It's always possible that he misheard and who knows what 'doing' means. But he did say, 'We won't be doing franking credits.' Do you know what they brought into the budget? It is a change to taxation on franking credits. This is another broken promise.

They claim that this was a responsible budget. There's some creative accounting in what the Treasurer said last night. Let's go to the facts. How much more tax is going to be charged to Australians over the next four years in this budget versus the March budget? It's a very simple number: $142 billion of extra taxes. That's a rising rate of income tax, a 10 per cent increase in the average income tax rate paid across the economy. The only way that is going to be stopped is the stage 3 tax cuts. Those opposite can't even bear to mention them. It goes further than that. Not only are they taxing an additional $142 billion; they're spending an additional $115 billion. This is a traditional Labor budget. It is a big spending, big taxing budget. The one thing we know in this budget is that they put in a great big gap for the next budget, which is to get rid of the stage 3 tax cuts. However much they're taxing, they always want to tax more.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're delighted to have a debate about energy policy and energy prices because of the 150 members of parliament there is not a man or woman who is more culpable for the diabolical state in our energy markets, in our generating system, in this place than the member for Hume. So ashamed is he of his diabolical record that he has now scurried from the chamber. There is not a man or woman in this place who is more culpable for the diabolical state of our energy market in Australia than this guy here: 22 failed energy policies. All of them can collectively take responsibility for the 22 failed energy policies of the last nine years. But the person who has got his grubby fingers over every single one of them is the member for Hume. He personally did his very best to white-ant and pull apart the energy policies and then the prime ministerships of those people who'd put those policies together. There is nobody in this parliament who has more personal responsibility for today's state of rising energy prices than the member for Hume. It's the member for Hume who should be writing to all Australians and saying: 'I am sorry for my diabolical record as the previous energy minister of this country.'

How do we know this? From the fact that, on his very watch, we had nine years of energy policy chaos. What was the result? Well, the result was a capital strike, with four gigawatts of baseload energy transmission withdrawn from the system—four gigawatts withdrawn from the system. And how much went back in? One gigawatt. So, on his watch, we saw three gigawatts of energy generation withdrawn from the system. If you want to know why power bills are going up in 2022, look at the woeful track record of this bloke over here. He's like the guy who mugs you on the way to the shops and then complains that you haven't come home with the shopping. It's all on him and on every single one of them.

We used to hear a lot—those who've been in this place for a while remember hearing—the member for Hume, when he was the energy minister, bragging about his 'big stick' legislation. Remember his big stick legislation? Waving it around in the air, bragging to us that he had legislated a big stick. Well, he doesn't talk about it much today, does he? Neither do his mates down there. They don't talk much about the big stick anymore. They promised the big stick legislation was going to deliver a 25 per cent reduction in energy prices. We all remember that. 'I'm going to wave around my big stick and threaten the energy companies: "If you don't lower your prices, I'm going to wave my big stick at you."' Twenty-five per cent was promised. What was delivered? A 240 per cent increase! This guy thought he was a student of Teddy Roosevelt—we all remember that one: the bloke who was going to 'speak softly and carry a big stick'—except he got it the wrong way around. Our bloke spoke stickly and carried a big soft! A 240 per cent increase in energy prices—and they have the gall to come in here today and complain about the impact of rising energy prices on Australian households! Well, we are not going to have a bar of it.

To add insult to injury, on 6 April, one month before the election, when he was due to sign off on and release and expose to Australians what the default market offer was going to be for wholesale prices throughout the country, did he sign off and did he release those prices? No, he did not. He signed an instrument which guaranteed that those prices would not be released to the Australian people until after the election. And why did he do that? Why on earth would he want to hide the truth from the Australian people before the election about the cost of energy prices? The reason was: he knew that energy prices were about to go up by 20 per cent. And what Australians are seeing in their energy bills today is the direct result of this bloke's policy. Every single cent of increase in electricity prices and gas prices is on his head. There is not another person in parliament who is more culpable, more responsible, for energy price increases in this country today than the member for Hume—not another person.

But it does not have to be this way. It's why we, as one of our very first acts when we came in to government, was to ensure that we created stability and certainty for energy policies in this country. How did we do it? We legislated our carbon emissions targets and we sent a very clear message to energy markets and investors in this country that we believed in the science and we were going to be partners in the energy transition, giving certainty—not a different policy every six months, which is what they had seen from the legacy of this mob over there. We've legislated, providing investment certainty, and it is flowing. The big investors are lining up. They're hungry for the projects because they know that there is a future in renewable energy.

Gone are the fruitless arguments that they're still having over there about whether we should be moving to a clean energy future and generating more energy in our network through renewable energies. We legislated for climate change and carbon emissions, but we also legislated to kickstart wind energy, and, in particular, offshore wind energy, in this country. We know there is enormous potential and jobs capacity, particularly in offshore wind energy generation, in this country. We don't have to have the chaos that we've seen over the last eight years which has seen power prices go up and up and up. There is an alternative, and the alternative is the policies offered by the Albanese Labor government.

They often talk about the impact of jobs in regional Australia. That is the reason why our plan specifically identifies regional Australia as the site for renewable energy generation. We know that there are jobs in it: jobs in the building of it, jobs in the maintenance of it and jobs in the transmission.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They laugh, they wonder and they ask these baseless, ridiculous, bone-headed questions all through question time about our plan to rewire the nation.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Come on, tell us. Where are you going to get your content from for offshore wind?

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dangerous Dan, the member for Wannon, over here wants to know what Rewiring the Nation will do. Here's the tip: if you don't have a connector between the place where you're generating the energy and the place where you're using it, it doesn't work, sunshine. It doesn't work. That's why we are rewiring the nation. It is exactly what industry is after. This mob had the option to do it for nine long years, but, instead of fighting for the Australian people, they were fighting amongst themselves, and we are seeing the result—

Opposition mem bers interjecting—

They're still at it. They are still in denial. Listen to them. They are still shouting at the wind and arguing amongst themselves. They can't land an energy policy. They couldn't land one in government, and they've certainly got no hope of landing one in opposition, particularly when you've got the chief clan running their energy and economic policy.

Australians have hope that we are going to put all this behind us. We have policy certainty, we have legislated the targets, we are working with industry to ensure that we can kickstart legislation, we are working with manufacturers who know where the future is in this area, and we will ensure that, from the very beginning to the very end, we have a supply chain of renewable energy and there are jobs in it. This is the thing that these numbskulls over there could never get through their thick heads: there are jobs in renewable energy. There are jobs in the regions in renewable energies, and the people in the regions know it.

At the run-up to the last election, they were running these arguments in their inner-city seats, and they lost them; and the next mob will be regional Australia.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is the day after the new government's first budget, and we all know it is a budget littered with broken promises. Now, I can tell you about all 275 broken promises that I have on my mind right now, and they're all related to power prices. Every single Labor member in this chamber was elected to this House on the basis of a promise—a promise made no less than 97 times. That promise was that household power bills would come down by $275. Today in question time, yet again, we asked the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the responsible minister to confirm the promise that they told the Australian people, but they couldn't, because they know it's a broken promise.

Last night, the new government's own budget put in black and white the very thing that the Prime Minister has not had the courage himself to say—that is that the $275 promise has been broken, entirely broken, because electricity prices, already skyrocketing, will go up by another 50 per cent and gas prices by 40 per cent. This is a clear broken promise, and it comes after the coalition government not only delivered on its emissions targets—not only reduced emissions by over 20 per cent on 2005 levels—but also reduced the price of power for households by eight per cent, for businesses by 10 per cent and for industry by 12 per cent. Yet the Labor Party assured the Australian people they could do better—they could reduce the price further—and it has only been going up since.

We know that the cost of living is the key issue for Australians right now. The government conceded this last night—that, because inflation is going up, they need a cost-of-living plan. But if you go to the budget papers, in particular Budget Paper No. 1, and look at the economic outlook section, within the pages on inflation, the most common theme about what is driving inflation now is the increasing price of energy. Energy is going through the roof in terms of its cost for businesses and households. That's the No. 1 issue driving inflation, according to the first budget paper. So then you might turn up and say: 'Right. What's the government's plan? What is the government going to do about it?' The government has a cost-of-living plan. It's got five points, but nowhere in that does the government address the issue of the cost of power. First, the government breaks the promise; second, it has a so-called cost-of-living plan that excludes any consideration for reducing people's power prices.

Believe it or not, there's a more serious long-term issue we have here with the broken promise and Labor's first budget. The $275 promise was based on economic modelling. We now know, through the government's own budget papers, that that economic modelling is flawed. We also know that because today neither the Prime Minister, the Treasurer nor the minister would actually stand by that modelling. Yet here's the deal: the modelling, which is flawed and is now proven to be flawed, is the exact modelling that the government has based its entire energy policy on. Its entire energy policy is based on that same economic modelling. The member for Whitlam was boasting about legislating targets only a moment ago. The government went to this House and legislated targets for emissions reduction without having the department do any economic modelling. What was it based on? The same flawed economic modelling that has now been revealed. This is why Australia's energy sector is going to become an absolute train wreck. It will be a train wreck because, we now know and Australians know, it's based on economic modelling that is flawed. The government knows it. The Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the minister cannot defend it, and that train wreck will be on them. It will be on the Labor government.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a performance. What an absolute debacle on that side of the House. We are meant to be taking lessons from a guy proposing that the answer to Australia's energy future is nuclear, the most expensive form of energy in the world. That's what we're meant to believe from this bloke. I've been listening to the comments from those opposite, and I can't make head or tail of what they're on about. It's just beyond comprehension what they are talking about. They are making absolutely no sense at all. It was under their government and the former energy minister, the member for Hume, that these problems arose with energy prices. This is the guy who, before the election, hid from the Australian people the fact that a 19 per cent energy price rise was on the way. That's what they did on that side of the House when they were in government. Shameful conduct from those opposite when they were in government.

What we heard last night from the Treasurer was a responsible budget by the Albanese Labor government that tackles cost-of-living pressures head-on and provides strong and sound investment in improving our energy sector for the long term. That will result in energy prices being driven down over the long term. The facts speak for themselves: renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy in the world today. I come from the state of Tasmania, where we produce 100 per cent renewable energy. Marinus Link, which was signed off by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy last week—with me in the background; very proud to be there—will allow Tasmania's energy output to drive to 200 per cent. It will increase Tasmania's capacity. It will increase energy security. It's vital as part of the Battery of the Nation. We've got Liberal premiers, Liberal ministers, and a former Liberal senator of this place backing in Marinus Link, backing in renewables and totally repudiating the position of those opposite when it comes to renewable energy. They are all over the shop on that side of the House.

What we know on this side of the House is that we are consistent, methodical and competent when it comes to delivering policy that matters for people and families. This goes to the cost-of-living plan that we addressed last night, with five points that will help families but also help the economy. Cheaper child care is good for families and good for household budgets but also good for the economy because it gets workers, mostly women, back into the workforce. It's the equivalent of 37,000 workers back into the workforce at a time when employers are crying out for workers. It's a fantastic economic measure, not just a cost-of-living measure. There is an expansion of paid parental leave. It's a very important reform that allows families to take time off for their kids, particularly for dads, to spend more time with their young children. That's a very important reform.

Cheaper medicines: for the first time in Australia's history, the cost of medicines will come down. Those opposite are saying we've got no plan for the cost of living. We're making medicines cheaper!

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first time in 75 years.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The first time in 75 years—that's right, Member for Moreton. I can tell those opposite that people who buy medicines on the PBS will feel the benefits of this. One script a month—300 bucks a year you'll save.

More affordable housing: a comprehensive plan to tackle the housing crisis that this country is facing in both rentals and buying homes with the way prices have got out of control. We've got a comprehensive plan to get more affordable housing into the mix—it's far too detailed to go into in this speech. And, of course, we're going to get wages moving again. We're not going to pretend that will be easy, but we've made a start. We've backed the minimum wage increase. We're backing aged-care workers getting an increase. I don't forget that one of the first, most shameful acts of those opposite when they came to government was to knock out aged-care workers and early childcare workers getting a pay rise. That was nine years ago. They've paid the price ever since. We are backing some of the lowest-paid, hardest-working members of our community into getting a pay rise. We are addressing the cost of living.

I fully back Marinus Link. It's fantastic that that was signed last week. Renewable energy is the future of this country. Those on the opposite side should get on board or get out of the way.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What the Australian people know after last night is that under a federal Labor government the only way is up in Australia. That is for interest rates, because they are going up. The cost of living is going up. Mortgage repayments are going up. Electricity costs are going up by up to 56 per cent in the Labor budget. Gas prices are going up. Everything is going up. The price of food is going up because it relies on these things not only for production but for logistics. Those opposite claim the cost of living is going down, but their own budget papers prove that is not true. But something is frozen, and it has been admitted by the Treasurer and in the budget papers, and that is real wages. How many times did we hear that real wages were going to go up under a Labor government? But they are frozen for the next two years, according to your own budget papers.

We heard earlier about the big stick. Well, the big stick is being taken to the Australian people by federal Labor. We have people right now who cannot afford to rent a home. They are living in cars and caravans and tents. They need support. What support do we hear about from federal Labor? Yes, they have made changes for the PBS—for next year, not this year, not now. People need to be able to pay their bills right now. We heard some claims from the Prime Minister in question time about wholesale power prices. I thought it was quite interesting that the Prime Minister selected only a couple of particular years, because guess what: in one of the years that he left out, according to AEMO—to give one example: quarter 3 of 2020—the NEM wholesale power price was down 48 per cent to, in Queensland, $32 a megawatt hour. How convenient for the Prime Minister that he just happened to miss that contribution from AEMO. So the government are claiming there are enormous changes in wholesale power prices, but the reality is that, in one of the years that they didn't pick, the wholesale power price was down significantly—in fact by almost half.

What else happened? Well, we're expecting a 40 per cent increase in gas prices. So what have those opposite done? They've cut the strategic basin plans out of the budget—the things that actually develop more gas, which drives down the price because there is more supply. We continue to see more cuts. Madam Deputy Speaker, I'm sure you'll be very interested in this. I've heard about these organisations so many times in this place. The government have cut funding to the CSIRO, ANSTO and Geoscience Australia. Can you believe it, Madam Deputy Speaker? It is in the budget papers. They have cut the science academies of Australia—those individuals in Geoscience who go out and find the resources this country relies on. They have found resources with over $1 trillion, as part of their organisation, and that helps build our economy and provides confidence for those that invest. And we continue to hear from those opposite that this is not happening. It's your budget paper. It's not ours. It is in your documents.

We have seen today an outpouring from the Australian people, because they don't need these types of problems. They already have them. They have challenges paying their bills right now. And what have we seen? We have seen cuts in the budget to the things that will actually fix problems. An electricity price increase of 56 per cent will be not only devastating for every pensioner in this country but devastating for the manufacturing industry. We will lose jobs, because the industry is simply not competitive at those prices. Gas is exactly the same. Without cheap, affordable, reliable gas and electricity, we cannot be internationally competitive. And yet what we hear from those opposite is that they are going to expend billions of dollars on transmission, which is paid for as a regulated asset, with a guaranteed rate of return. It is paid for by—guess who?—electricity consumers and businesses. So your proposal drives up the price of electricity. It doesn't drive it down.

The big elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about is: if you are having an 80 per cent, roughly, renewable target, with intermittent wind and solar, you'll have intermittent power, because it does not work. It has to be backed up 100 per cent. That is in every international design for an electricity network. That has to be paid for, so you pay for it twice. You pay for the transmission. It will drive up power prices even further. We see a 56 per cent electricity price increase forecast in Labor's budget. Gas is going up. Prices are going up. The cost of living is going up. And what do we hear from those opposite? Silence. They continue to claim that this is not happening, even though it's in their documents, in their budget. The Australian people will not forgive them, because they know it is them who have to pay.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Part of the reason I stand in this chamber as the first Labor member Higgins is that the people of Higgins agreed that the former Prime Minister took no responsibility. The thing is: that outbreak of not taking responsibility has spread. It has spread like a contagion and infected everyone on the opposition benches. There is an inability to take responsibility for the chaos and neglect of the last nine years. Now we as a government are the adults in the room trying to clean up this mess.

What I witnessed yesterday was incredible—sitting in this chamber and listening to a budget delivered by our Treasurer, who then followed on with the National Press Club address. Honestly, it was a master class in fiscal responsibility. At its core was generational investment—not electoral bandaids like suspension of the fuel excise, which led to a liability on the heads and shoulders of Australians, but investment in our people and our future.

At the heart of that budget was something very close to my heart: cheaper child care, an investment of over $5 billion in women, in children and in our economy. Unlike those opposite, we see cheaper early childhood education and care as a force multiplier. It doesn't just benefit children; it enables women who have skills, knowledge and talent to re-enter the workforce, because what happens with the motherhood penalty is that they are held back. Suddenly they hit the dirt and the brakes come on and they lose traction. If things go really badly for them, they completely skid off the road altogether. I talked about this in my maiden speech. Years go by. Ambition is dimmed until it is snuffed out altogether. That almost happened to me, but what saved me was getting a grant from the government and re-entering the research economy.

So cheaper child care matters. It matters to people in my electorate. Higgins in Victoria pays the highest cost for child care, and that statement is based on a study from Victoria University. As I walked around my electorate, people were telling me, as they were clutching their babies, that they were paying $165 a day or $200 a day. In one case, unbelievably, a mother disclosed that she was paying $2,000 a month for child care. She understood that there were intangible benefits of working, but I can assure you that the warm glow of charity is not one of them. So it is incredible that this government has now stepped in to fill this void and we are giving our women a chance—a chance to get back on track, advance their careers and contribute to this economy. For too long women were deprioritised by those opposite. So that is a very real, tangible reform that is going to drive down the cost of living.

Among the other things, of course, is paid parental leave, which is going to be boosted from 18 weeks to 26 weeks—that is, six months—over the next four years. We're also investing heavily in affordable housing. In my electorate, South Yarra has a median house price of $2.2 million. No-one can afford that, yet I have thousands upon thousands of young renters living there because they love living there. It is a village. So it is incredibly heartening to see that we are investing in a million homes to be built over the next five years. That is going to make a real benefit for thousands and thousands of Australians around our country.

But we're not stopping there. We're also introducing cheaper medicines, something I know something about, having prescribed a lot of medicines in my life. I understand that people ration medicines, and when that happens there are always downstream consequences. Diabetes is out of control. Hypertension is out of control. People get heart attacks or strokes. They end up in the emergency department with sugars of 50 instead of 7. So we are going to be bringing that in in January, and it's going to save lives. This is the kind of policy reform that is going to put our country back on track, drive down cost-of-living pressures and give the generational investment our country needs.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This budget has entirely destroyed any credibility held by this government across so many different areas, but nowhere more so than in the most crucial of areas, the cost of living. Within the cost of living, there is no issue of more significance to Australian families than the cost of electricity and power. That's just the reality, and this government has consistently misled the Australian people, over a significant period of time when in opposition, about what it was going to do on electricity prices. It was entirely false before the election and we know now just how entirely false all those statements were, because they have been talking about this $275 a lot, right up until a crucial date in May, which was, of course, the election. If you read the Powering Australia plan and, sadly, I've done that, right there on the first page is, 'We will save households $275 on their electricity prices.' That's clearly not true, but it is on page 1 of the Powering Australia plan.

The Prime Minister wrote an op-ed in the Daily Mail, trying to reach as many people as possible. A lot of people read the Daily Mail. That op-ed says, 'We'll save you $275 on your power prices.' Not true. The Treasurer went to his local paper—I'm sure it's his local paper—My City Logan. I'm sure he takes very seriously the commitments he makes to MyCity Logan. On 15 Mayhe had a list of great things he was going to do but the very first one he said was, 'We'll invest in cleaner and cheaper energy through our Powering Australia policy to cut power bills by $275.' The people of Logan were told that very clearly by the Treasurer.

Then, perhaps most significantly of all, at the National Press Club a few days before the election—the Prime Minister was there, all the journalists were there and it was live on television—the centrepiece of the Prime Minister's speech was saving households $275 a year. They are just a few of the 97 occasions on which this occurred. But the weird thing is, and this is really interesting, on 12 July the Prime Minister gave a speech about energy to the Sydney Energy Forum. It was a really long speech, 2,300 words. But, oddly, two months after the election, no mention of the $275. It's very strange because they were so proud of this policy and they talked about it 97 times before the election then after the election, it became the policy that dare not speak its name. We know why, because it wasn't true, it was never true. They knew it wasn't true but they said it over and over.

We learn in the budget that electricity prices are going to rise by more than 50 per cent over the next two years. That is going to smash Australian families. It is a massive increase. Gas prices are up by more 40 per cent. We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of dollars every quarterly bill for Australian families, which is very different to prices coming down. This is a massive betrayal by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer.

The government was going to get real wages moving again too. Remember that? It was all going to be good after the election but the budget, again, says the opposite thing. It says that real wages are going to go down. Then to counter that inconvenient truth, the Treasurer and the member for Watson say, 'No, what we're going to do is reintroduce pattern bargaining, embed the ACTU into just about every workplace in Australia and that's going to sort out this issue.' That will be like going back to the 1970s and not in a good way. Not the Lillee and Thomson good aspect of the '70s; the bad aspects of the '70s.

This is a huge problem which is hitting people very hard because this is about the most fundamental issue of the cost of living. With all this going on, it's weird in the budget papers that the Treasurer found time to have a chapter called 'Measuring what matters'. He tells us that in 2023 there is going to be a measuring what matters statement, 'An important next step in facilitating a more informed and inclusive policy dialogue on how to improve the quality of life of all Australians.' We have got to wait until 2023. I am sure it's going to be wonderful! But here are some tips: tell them the truth, do something about the cost of living, don't say something that's wrong 97 times and try to act with integrity in public office.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am going to give some sage advice to the opposition. We, unfortunately, spent nine years on that side. When you put up a matter of public importance and you think it is important, you actually put people on the benches. Look at their side: one, two, three. They have got three people in the chamber. If they thought this was a big issue, they would have them over there giving us lectures, hectoring and interjecting. But they are nowhere to be seen, because they know they should hang their heads in shame for nine years of failure in this space.

We've got a Treasurer that's delivered a strong budget, a resilient budget, fulfilling our election commitments. I'll tell you what those people opposite did in their first budget. Their first budget resulted in the Prime Minister losing his job. Tony Abbott lost his job over that budget, and Joe Hockey, the then member for North Sydney, was never the same again. He sat there, a diminished man. What that mob did was have a commission of audit, and they cut $80 billion out of health and education. Remember the Medicare co-payments to make the cost of living harder for people in our areas? They are the people that did it. Then they froze the indexation of Medicare, year after year. And they have the gall to come into this place and give us lectures about the cost of living.

What about wages—10 years of failure. Have they ever supported a wage rise for low-paid workers? Not at all. Not once. When the former opposition leader, the now Prime Minister, held up a coin during the election campaign and talked about a $1-an-hour increase for low-paid workers, they called him a loose unit because they didn't support and still don't support wage rises. There has never been a wage cut or a wage freeze they haven't supported. That's the view that they took. That's what their former finance minister Mathias Cormann said in a moment of candour and honesty. That's what they truly believe. Those people opposite will never support the representatives of the workers. They'll never support the workers—the heroes of the pandemic.

When it comes to child care, they haven't supported that policy. There are 8,900 families in my electorate who will benefit, but those opposite will not support it. So they'll oppose that improvement for low-paid workers, for young families in my area—more than 10 per cent of the people living in places like Spring Mountain, Springfield Lakes, Ripley Valley and South Ripley in my electorate. Those opposite will vote against, not support, the childcare changes that will help those young families in my electorate. That's why the candidate that ran against me could not even talk about those issues in the last election. They should be ashamed of what they've done.

When it comes to education, they wouldn't support needs based funding. We on this side of the chamber believe that everyone has got a right to go to a cathedral of learning, a great state school—but parents have the right to send their kids to a private school and to support those private schools as well. We believe in education. Those opposite wanted to freeze—we've talked about the cost of living—pay rises for the military, the ADF, and only a campaign by military families and the Labor opposition, supporting the ADF, got pay rises for the military. So don't come into this place and give us lectures about the cost of living.

What about dementia supplements and aged-care supplements? It took them 32 minutes to get rid of $1.3 billion in funding to the most vulnerable people in this country: people living with dementia struggling with cost-of-living pressures. That is what those opposite did in 2013-14. That was their first budget. That's what they did when they came into office.

What we've done now that we've got into office is help people with cost-of-living pressures, like childcare and paid parental leave to help families. Under that mob, there wouldn't have been a budget paper from the Treasury that had wage indexation or expected wage rises. It wasn't achieved. It never was achieved. So don't give us lectures—because there's a 3.75 per cent wage increase in the budget papers. That's what's going to happen across the board. They never achieved any of that, not once when they were in government. It was nine years of neglect—nine years of not caring less about families, working families, and individuals, people in my electorate, people in working-class areas, young families in regional and rural areas. They pose—they preen in this place—about how they're concerned about helping working families and people in need. But they do nothing when they're in government; they make those people's lives that much harder.

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The electorate of Braddon—the north-west, west coast and King Island in Tasmania—is a hardworking, no-nonsense electorate. We're the engine room of the Tasmanian economy. In fact, 52½ per cent of Tasmania's GDP comes out of our resource sector down the west coast. Our thriving agriculture sector, our forestry sector and our fishing and tourism sectors all contribute equally to Tasmania's GDP, but they've been through the works. They've been through quite a bit of trauma in recent times. They've been through COVID, like the rest of the country. They've been through a wet winter, and, finally, in the last couple of weeks, they've endured a devastating flood in my region. I want to acknowledge all the SES, emergency services and volunteers that have helped out during that localised campaign. They've done it tough and they've had a kick in the guts.

That community has bound together, worked together, helped each other out, lifted each other up and worked in conjunction with regional SES and other organisations to ensure that people are looked after. But they received another a kick in the guts last night, when they read the budget. They felt they had been disenfranchised and left out. We're a regional electorate. We're a rural electorate. We come from the bush. My electorate, along with me and many others on this side, feel that the bush was abandoned last night.

As well as being abandoned, they were also insulted, because this is where the food comes from for our region; this is where our income comes from. And it's impacted in many different ways. If you want to know how it's impacted them and what this budget means for them, we can put it very simply: first of all, your cost of living is going up. That is undeniable. That is a fact. Your power prices are going to go up. Just on that, I received an email from a constituent. He's a farmer and a mate of mine. He grows seed potatoes and has a coolstore in the Latrobe area. His name's Andrew. His last bill from his energy supplier was $26,000 for the month of June, and his power bill for the month of July has increased from $26,000 to $63,000. It's a significant increase that will probably put him out of business, considering the damage that's occurred during the floods. From $26,000 to $63,000 in a month—and that's going to get worse.

When we talk about business, particularly agribusiness, advanced manufacturing, forestry and those hardworking jobs where people take risks and put their livelihoods on the line, we know business confidence is king. As soon as that confidence is knocked, then it's infectious, and other businesses are also infected by that lack of confidence. Sooner or later that builds into the stage where people give up. They sell their business and walk off. And I don't want to see that in my great electorate of Braddon.

They're hurting right now, and they need instant relief. The local government organisations and local councils need money to drive their bottom line, when they're putting out excavators and crews to fix the local bridges, culverts and infrastructure that they so desperately need to get the vehicles and the public through. They need assistance now. It's an insult, really, to offer them $1,000 or $400 for every child. We need those roads and that critical infrastructure fixed up, and the government needs to act now.

If you want to know what else is impacting my producers in Tasmania, it's diesel prices and energy prices, as I alluded to earlier. The disparity between diesel fuel and ULP derivatives is up to 50c per litre. Diesel, which was traditionally cheaper than ULP, now costs 50c more. Tasmania runs on diesel. Our trucks, our mineral industry, our resources sector, our logistics—everything comes by boat, and they've got diesel engines. The gas price is affecting the removal of sulphur out of that diesel, and that's what's causing the disparity. And they're going to see more of this, because no parameters have been taken. Instead of fixing the problem and finding a way out, all we're doing is the blame game, and it's got to stop. Look after the bush.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm going to start with these famous words: 'We will deliver a surplus in our budget each and every year we're in government.' That was said by Joe Hockey, that famous Treasurer of the Liberal government, who goaded the Australian automotive industry out of existence—and thousands and thousands of jobs with it. What we saw with that government when they were in was actually a tripling of the debt. It was headed for $1.2 trillion under their watch. We had the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, come in here and say that there would be no cuts to SBS, no cuts to health and no cuts to education, and they tried the GP tax. All these were things that they did over nine years of neglect and darkness, which they seem to forget now. They seem to be absolutely ignorant of what they did when they were in government. They expect it to be fixed just like that.

We know that, when it comes to the cost of living, people are hurting. They are hurting because of a whole range of issues, but No. 1 was a deliberate strategy of the Liberal and National parties to drive down wages. There has never, ever been a wage case going forward to the Industrial Relations Commission or to Fair Work Australia—which is the place we go to now—in which those opposite have supported an increase for low-paid workers. They have done everything they can to make it harder for Australians who are doing it tough at the moment through things like child care.

We could talk about power prices and that, because we remember Captain Cayman himself, the member for Hume, coming in here and carrying on. Remember, he was going to carry his big stick—one of the 22 plans they had for power prices that they never, ever delivered. Well, that big stick turned out to be a bit of limp lettuce. It did nothing. In fact, during his time as energy minister, the thing he was most famous for was dodgy documents relating to Clover Moore. That was the extent of what they were aiming to do.

You have that mob over there, who still sit there and say, 'Oh, we've got to continue with developing coalmines.'

A government member: It's not a mob; there's three of them.

There's three of them—yes, three of them. It's probably the brains trust! This is the day that we talk about a matter of public importance. Well, let's have a look. We know that renewable energy is the cleanest and cheapest form of energy. Once you've got those systems up and running, you actually have free energy that can come out of that. We also hear the misnomer from those opposite about how the wind doesn't blow all the time and solar doesn't work at night. The irony is that it was one of their resources ministers, the one that the member for Cook had to shadow because he was going that badly—old Scomo decided to pop in and fill in that position himself at the same time; you know, he's interested—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the member to refer to members by their correct titles, please.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, if I were talking about the member for Cook, I'd use my five minutes going through all of his titles that he had tucked away! But we talk about resources. The resources that we have here in this country have been neglected by that lot over there in the nine years that they forget about, are actually about building battery technology and developing the stuff that is actually going to work and help to make things cheaper and better for people. All we've heard about since we've come in here—and the shadow minister pops in—is the $275. Never once have we seen an apology for the 240 per cent increase in power prices under their watch or the $500 that Tony Abbott promised and never, ever delivered. That lot over there are very hypocritical when it comes to talking about power prices.

I'll be very clear about what we said in the Powering Australia plan. Our election promise has been absolutely consistent with the modelling that we took to the election. I'm going to say this slowly so that those opposite can keep up. We said in our Powering Australia plan, there in black and white, 'It will cut power bills for families and businesses by $275 a year for homes by 2025 compared to today.' Let's remember: 2025. So they sit there and say that we've broken our promise three years before it's actually due. I'm not sure where you get your logic from over there, but it's not real bright at all to be able to come in here, considering your history of failing every single time you talked about budget surpluses, with your 'Back in black' mugs.

Of course, the good old member for Hume, the shadow Treasurer, is coming in here the day after the budget is delivered, and he can't come in and talk about economic policy. He is the greatest thing that the member for Rankin, the Treasurer, could ever wish for. Jim has certainly been kissed, having Angus Taylor as his shadow. So, before we hear any more of this hypocritical stuff coming from those opposite, have a look at your own record before you get up and speak.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A point of order?

Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A point of order, Deputy Speaker: I'd like the members referred to by their correct and proper title.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have reminded the member of that just previously, and I'm happy to remind all members of the House to refer to each other by their respective titles. That concludes debate on the matter of public importance.