Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Within my electorate of Deakin, and, indeed, throughout Australia, people are suffering are from a cost-of-living crisis that I have not seen in my time in this place. I must say, in looking at the agenda of the government over the first two weeks of this parliament and the activities of the Prime Minister over summer, that what electors in Deakin are seeing—and what I think Australians are seeing—is a fundamental lack of focus from this government on the most pressing issue that Australians are now suffering from.

We all know that the millions of Australians with mortgages are seeing, and have seen, interest rate rises. There have been nine consecutive rises, eight of which have happened since this government came to office. For a household with an average mortgage, it's an increase of $16,000 a year. We're seeing record inflation; the most recent figures of 7.8 per cent highlight that the government has lost control of what is one of the most corrosive aspects of any economic situation. We saw the Prime Minister over summer, and all he wanted to do was talk about the Voice or hang out at the tennis. We see no urgency from this government on the most pressing issue that people face every day. They face it every time they go to the supermarket. There are Australians now who make decisions in the supermarket about what they will go without, and there are parents who will themselves go without so they can provide for their children.

We're also seeing the consequences of the government's broken promises in relation to reducing power prices. The Prime Minister said, on 97 occasions before the election, that he would deliver a reduction of $275 a year. It wasn't a slip of the tongue once or twice. He said it 97 times. And, at the very least, households are seeing not increases of hundreds of dollars but increases of thousands of dollars.

Last week, I had a constituent send me a letter that they'd received from their energy provider, and it read as follows: 'Hello, as you may have heard, energy prices have been going up. On 1 February, your natural gas rates are going up. We understand this isn't news you want to hear.' Then there was a whole lot of other flowery language. And then: 'We estimate that the new rates will cost you $602.74 more, including GST, a year.' That's $600 a year more, and that's just gas; that doesn't also include electricity. So we're seeing inflation out of control, which is leading to higher mortgage interest rates, which, again, for the average house means $16,000 a year more out the door on their mortgages. We're seeing the price of every single good, service and product—including staple products at supermarkets—rising, with inflationary levels higher than they've been for 33 years. We're seeing power prices not only not going down by $275, as the Prime Minister promised on 97 occasions, but going up by thousands of dollars.

You would have thought that, in returning to parliament for the first sitting fortnight of the year, there would be an obsession from the government on these issues and an absolute focus on addressing these issues. But, instead, we see a Prime Minister seemingly unconcerned about the economic situation being faced by households in this country; a Prime Minister who's very self-satisfied, very pleased and very happy, and who's enjoying the trappings of office—enjoying nights at the tennis and hanging out with musicians—while Australians are doing it hard.

This is a prime minister who said he'd show up. This is a prime minister who said he'd deliver $275 price reductions in power prices. This is a prime minister who said he'd deliver cheaper mortgages. So, on every single measure, we're seeing a Labor Party and a government that not only is not showing the focus that is necessary but is incapable of addressing these challenges.

We know, and Australians have seen it before, that you always pay more under Labor. The economy always tanks under Labor. Labor claim it's all a bit of hard luck and bad luck for them and bad timing. Bad luck seems to follow Labor, and Australians pay the price.

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is extraordinary to rise to speak after a speech given by a former minister from a party that was in government for the better part of a decade and from a party that came to parliament with an urgent recall in December to put a cap on power prices and voted against it. Yet he's just spent some of his precious speaking time trying to suggest that the Albanese government has done nothing to deal with rising energy prices, having voted against the measure to reduce rising energy prices and having been part of a government—as a minister, no less—where a report that was given to the government before the last election, in May last year, about increasing energy prices was—what was it, again?—hidden from the Australian public.

This is a minister who was a minister for housing, and eight months after his tenure we are facing a housing affordability and accessibility crisis. He somehow thinks that the people in his electorate and the people of Australia are going to believe that that just sprang out of nowhere in the last eight months and had nothing to do with the bad policies and lack of policies of the government he was part of.

I know it's the last day of two weeks of sitting, and we're all a little bit tired because we've been working so hard—we want to go home—but it's not really an excuse for the member for Deakin to come into this chamber and spend more time personally attacking the Prime Minister than actually talking about the issues that matter and acknowledging what's happened this year. Cheaper medicines came in from 1 January, the biggest cut in the price of the PBS in 75 years, and cheaper child care starts on 1 June or July—anyway, very soon. These will have a huge impact on the cost of living.

What happened after we got elected last year? Because we made submissions to the Fair Work Commission and were brave enough to say that workers on the lowest incomes needed to have more money, the minimum wage went up. Returning to the energy price cap, the evidence so far is that the increases in energy prices have been reduced because of the urgent measures that we took in December, which the opposition voted against. So to imply that this government is not dealing with cost-of-living pressures is fanciful Alice in Wonderland garbage, to be completely frank with this chamber.

What have we done this week? What are our priorities? They are: the Housing Australia Future Fund and the National Reconstruction Fund. We've got a safeguard mechanism and paid parental leave. Only one of those four got support from the opposition. We are in a crisis of affordable and accessible housing, and we've all been talking about it for a long time. I've told this chamber a number of times about this amazing young man Jack in my electorate, who was homeless and is now a social worker with the council and is part of a campaign for more youth crisis accommodation in my electorate. I talked about it all through the last term of government, which did nothing about it.

I was so excited this week to see that the state Labor government has stepped up and is investing in this space. Our excellent state member for Frankston, Paul Edbrooke, announced that the state government is delivering more than $50 million in funding to provide safe and stable accommodation for young people who are at risk of homelessness. Frankston is going to be home to one of 10 new youth housing projects that received funding, and this is huge for my community. We have a state government that is stepping up to break the cycle of homelessness and to talk about and deliver safe, secure housing, particularly for young people, as well as a federal Albanese Labor government, which I'm proud to be a member of, with the Housing Future Fund, which is going to make a massive difference. It is a $10 billion fund. And we have an opposition that is voting against it and a Greens party that apparently doesn't support it, because they want to do other things. It's unbelievably wrong.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There was so much hope at the last election for those of us who want climate action. Finally, the guy who brought a lump of coal into parliament and wanted to lead a gas-led recovery in the middle of a climate crisis was gone, and we saw a record number of people switch their vote to the Greens. Our vote went up, Independents' vote went up and the parties that backed more coal and gas—Labor and Liberal—saw their vote go backwards. We now have a parliament that can take the climate action that this country and the world needs.

We got off to a reasonably good start last year when, with the Greens' support, we managed to make a climate change bill better and take a first step on the road to tackling the climate emergency. Again, with the Greens' support, we managed to get legislation through to make electric vehicles cheaper and to stop propping up the fossil fuel industry. So there was real hope from so many people who wanted to see Australia take the action we need—to stop the droughts, the floods and the fires from getting worse and to ensure that our kids and our grandkids have a chance of living in something that is like the safe climate that people of earlier generations have known.

So, how utterly disappointing it was to find Labor coming up with legislation that said they want to make the climate crisis worse by opening new coal and gas mines. There are 117 new coal and gas mines in the pipeline, and Labor is bringing legislation to parliament saying they want them to be able to go ahead, under their new so-called safeguard mechanism. Then they released documentation last year to put it in black and white that they want to open up every single one of the big new climate bombs that Scott Morrison backed: Beetaloo, Scarborough, Browse. They want to light the fuse of these climate bombs that contain years worth of the country's pollution.

There is a very clear message coming from the world's scientists, from the International Energy Agency, from the UN Secretary-General and from the young people who are marching on the street, and that is: To have any chance of getting the climate crisis under control, we have to stop opening coal and gas mines. You can't fix a problem while you're making the problem worse. You can't put out the fire while you're pouring petrol on it.

So the Greens have put to the government a very reasonable offer. We said, there are real problems with your legislation, because you're allowing these big polluters to keep on polluting as long as they offset it by buying some tree-planting permits on other side of the country. You've got weak targets in your legislation that would see the Great Barrier Reef get completely cooked. It's Tony Abbott's old mechanism, which you're trying to reheat, and we're not confident it will do the job. But we've said to the government that we will put those concerns aside and give their scheme a chance if they agree with one thing: Stop opening new coal and gas mines, Labor. Stop making the problem that we're trying to fix worse by adding years—decades—and countries worth of pollution to the problem.

I challenge any member in this place on the Labor side to go to one of those areas that was hit by floods, fires or droughts and explain to them why opening a new coal or gas mine in the middle of a climate crisis is a good idea. The member for Sydney has been out saying a few things today. Well, I want the member for Sydney to go to all her constituents in Sydney and tell them why Labor is preparing to die in a ditch over the right to open new coal and gas mines in the middle of a climate crisis. The member for Richmond needs to go to her flood-hit constituents and tell them that Labor is saying they want to open up new coal and gas projects. The member for Macnamara needs to go to his constituents, including those who are facing the threat of rising sea levels, and say, 'No, Labor wants to open new and coal and gas mines,' and that they're prepared to make it an absolute condition.

We are in a climate crisis, and people know that coal and gas are the main causes of the climate crisis. It's a very sensible proposition to say, 'Stop opening new projects.' The offer is there for Labor; it's on the table. We can pass this legislation next week; just stop opening new coal and gas projects, please.