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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Australians are questioning the competence of this Prime Minister, knowing he's clearly not across the detail of decisions which he's making which adversely affect the lives of Australians. The economic decisions have resulted in prices going up and up. Energy policy is a disaster with power prices going up and up. The $450 million referendum was against advice and resulted in our country being divided. Will the Prime Minister apologise to the Australian people?

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

It is interesting to get a question from the Leader of the Opposition about division. The Leader of the Opposition has never seen a policy that he doesn't oppose. He's opposed all of the measures that we've put in place, and we've put in place a few. In recent times we passed the Housing Australia Future Fund through the parliament, unlocking $10 billion in investments in social and affordable housing—opposed by those opposite. The government committed a further billion dollars for public and community housing—opposed by those opposite. I went to Whyalla looking at the transition which is occurring in the steel industry there, moving towards green hydrogen producing green steel. I, along with the South Australian government, announced the upgrade of Port Bonython to assist in that process.

We hosted the National Disaster Preparedness Summit here, contrasting with what occurred in the lead-up to 2019 where the attitude was: 'Nothing to see here.' It was the first time the summit has ever been hosted here in this parliament, bringing together key stakeholders including from federal, state and territory emergency services, logistics, food and groceries, utilities and the non-government sector. We've released the employment white paper, mapping the future for good jobs, skills and training in Australia. We'll have more to say about that later today. We announced projects from the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator with the Victorian and New South Wales governments.

We've opened and announced new urgent care clinics that are now operating, serving people, keeping people out of emergency departments, giving them the health care they need when they need it with just their Medicare card, not their credit card.

We secured the release and safe return to Australia of journalist Cheng Lei. Cheng Lei is now reunited with her two wonderful daughters and her family. During recent times, we attended the ASEAN and the East Asia Summit in Indonesia with our most important of friends, promoting prosperity and stability in our region. I was the first Prime Minister in two decades to visit the Philippines and elevate our relationship and the strategic partnership. At the G20 in India, we advocated for Australia's interests in clean energy and economic resilience. Australia is once again around the chamber.