Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Before the election, this Prime Minister misled Australians when he said families would be better off under a Labor government. Since Labor was elected, interest rates have gone up eight times and mortgage repayments have increased by $1,400 for a typical family. To make it worse, the Albanese government's economic policies are fuelling inflation and driving interest rates higher. Prime Minister, why do Australian families always pay more under Labor?

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

Member for Deakin, the Prime Minister will be heard in silence.

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

Australians are certainly paying the price for a decade of Liberal and National neglect. That's what's going on here. They're paying a price for delay, denial, waste and rorts. We have been impacted by international circumstances arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but because of the decade of neglect we didn't have the preparation that we needed. We were more vulnerable than we would have been because those opposite left us with $1 trillion of debt with not enough to show for it.

Those opposite left us with skills shortages, including in areas where they told everyone to leave the country and refused to provide them with any financial support whatsoever. Those opposite left us with a decade of stagnant wages, not because of bad luck but because of bad policy. They said that low wages were a key design feature of their economic architecture.

Those opposite spent the Abbott years—apparently he might be coming back in the Senate; there's a sign they're in touch with the future for you—saying no to everything, and then they got into government and just kept saying no because they didn't have any positive plans even when they were in government. Now they are just saying no to everything again. 'No' to the National Reconstruction Fund, which is about supply chains, which is about jobs, which is about Australian manufacturing, which is about Australian resilience, which is about leaving us less vulnerable to international shocks. What do those opposite say? They say: 'No, we're against that. We're against that because it will have an independent board and won't rort the funding.' It's something they don't recognise! 'No' to secure jobs, 'no' to Australian manufacturing, 'no' to new industries. They are defining themselves once again not by what they're for but by what they're against.