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

People are being robbed at the supermarket check-out, and Labor couldn't care less—couldn't care less. Paying more than a hundred bucks for a basic grocery shop is daylight robbery, yet families around the country are being forced to do this every day. Coles and Woolworths are ripping people off at the check-out, and Labor won't do anything about it. Coles and Woolies are raking in more than a billion dollars of profit during a cost-of-living crisis, and Labor won't do anything about it. Households are being forced to choose between putting food on the table and paying the rent, and Labor won't do anything about it. Fruit, some veggies, eggs, cheese, bread, milk, even toilet paper—these should be treated as essential items, not a luxury, yet, because Coles and Woolworths keep price gouging with absolutely no consequence, they're becoming harder and harder to afford.

We need to break up the supermarket duopoly and we need to make price gouging illegal. Labor has the power to do this today but is choosing not to. No-one should have to tap their card at the check-out and worry whether they have enough money to cover the shop that day. By putting the big Coles and Woolworths supermarkets duopoly on notice that they can be broken up and by ending price gouging and making it illegal, we can bring down the cost of living and make groceries cheaper for everyone. The only thing standing in the way of that right now is the Labor Party.

This has reached crisis point in this country. Woolworths made $1.6 billion in profit in its most recent annual results. Coles made $1.1 billion in profit in its most recent annual results. And what does the Prime Minister do? He dresses himself up in a Coles vest and goes and plays Coles cosplay while everyone else is struggling to afford the groceries at the check-out and wondering whether their card is going to bounce and whether they've got enough money to pay for the basics to stay alive.

People are skipping meals in order to pay the rent and their mortgages. Rents, on average, have gone up a hundred dollars a week since this government came to power, and mortgages about double that. As a result, 3.7 million families, it's reported today, are struggling with food insecurity in this country because the massive cost-of-living pressures that are coming from everywhere are being felt by people in many places and especially at the check-out. Meanwhile, what happens? Coles and Woolies make billions of dollars in profit, and the Prime Minister embraces them and hugs them and does press conferences with them in their uniforms. Meanwhile, at that very same Coles supermarket that day, there's someone who's choosing whether or not they can put that $20-a-kilo cheese, or milk or bread into their supermarket trolley, because they're worried they're not going to have enough money to be able to afford it. Food services are telling us that they're seeing people that they've never seen before. People who've got jobs and people who've got stable accommodation are coming up and asking for help because the cost of everything is going up so much.

What is driving the inflation crisis in this country? It's not everyday people who are struggling to make ends meet and to have enough money to pay for food and to pay rent. It's the massive profiteering by these big corporations that are making record profits. The money's not finding its way to the farmers or the producers of the food. It's going straight to the owners of these big corporations who are making massive profits off the back of price gouging and profiteering in the middle of a crisis.

Labor's response to inflation is to ask everyday people to bear the cost through higher interest rates and higher rents. That is using everyday people as cannon fodder in the war on inflation, leaving the RBA to go and lift up interest rates and keep pushing them up to the point where the housing crisis breaks people. Instead, Labor keeps allowing these big corporations to profiteer, price gouge and put everyday people further into pain.

There's an alternative way of tackling this massive cost-of-living crisis that we've got, and that is to make these big corporations start paying tax, to step in and stop the price gouging—make the price gouging illegal—and to use the money that we raise from making these big corporations and billionaires pay tax to make everyday people's lives better by doing things like putting dental into Medicare or making child care free. That's how you tackle the inflation, cost-of-living and inequality crises without throwing everyday people to the wolves in the way that Labor is at the moment. But it requires guts. It means the Prime Minister has to stop donning Coles vests and, instead, take on Coles and Woolworths, make them stop price gouging and make price gouging illegal. Instead of sidling up to the big corporations and the billionaires and going to their birthday parties and their lavish anniversary functions, start making the big corporations and billionaires pay tax, and use that money to make everyday people's lives better. Use the power of government to step in and stop rents soaring to the point where no-one can afford them, stop the price gouging that's fuelling these massive profits of Coles and Woolworths, and stop the banks making billions of dollars in profits off the back of high mortgage rates that everyday people are struggling to afford. A government has to step in and stop letting these big corporations off the hook, because it is breaking people.

Housing in this country is rigged. It's no longer just a housing crisis but a housing catastrophe. Yet Labor cannot even bring themselves to say the words 'housing crisis' or 'rental crisis'. They won't help renters, they make mortgage holders pay more and more, and they give wealthy property investors an unfair advantage over first home buyers when it comes to buying a home. When 75 per cent of all Labor MPs, including the Prime Minister himself, are landlords, you understand what's going on. How's that for self-interest straight after they gave themselves a $4½-thousand-a-year tax cut? If you can't buy at the moment then you have to rent. But, with rents skyrocketing out of control, people are choosing between paying rent and putting food on the table, or they're ending up sleeping in their cars and in tents because they can't find an affordable rental. All the while, Labor gloats about a surplus. Meanwhile, back in Victoria, we've got Labor selling off land earmarked for public housing to the highest bidders—to property developers. There are 120,000 Victorians on the public housing waiting list in the midst of the worst housing crisis we've seen, yet they're lining their pockets rather than building homes for people. It is disgraceful.

Just like the classic landlord special of painting over the light fitting or the window handle to cut corners, Labor's housing plan does nothing but paint over the cracks without addressing the pressures that are causing the cracks in the first place. If you're sick of this system and you want change, you can't keep voting for the same old two parties and expecting a different result.

The Greens are fighting for renters, for mortgageholders and for people who want to buy their first home. We want to freeze rent increases, give people lower rate mortgages and make housing more affordable by ending those billions in tax breaks which load the deck in favour of wealthy property investors. We know that this won't happen overnight, but nothing changes if nothing changes. The first step is to vote for someone who will fight for you.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To be honest, I'm a little bit surprised that there aren't any government speakers on this motion to take note of the 2024-25 budget papers. It's been left to the Greens leader—the member for Melbourne—and me to talk about this important topic. It is important because the budget is the economic framework which determines economic activity, which determines how businesses and household budgets are shaped into the future. There were some sentences in the member for Melbourne's speech which would resonate, but the difficulty is that the Greens are not part of the solution; in fact, they are a part of the problem.

Let me tell you: the Greens want to take this country down a path of social instability, a path lacking societal cohesion. I really worry that the Greens may get more seats in inner city suburbs. I've always said that the worst Labor member is always going to be better than the best Greens member because the policies that the Greens put forward are absolutely nutty.

The Greens leader spoke about the duopoly of Coles and Woolworths. I'll just say this: the Nationals and, now, the Liberals are putting forward a divestiture policy and plan which has some positivity about it. To be fair, many young people, when they go for their first full-time job—in regional areas, in particular—often present a curriculum vitae which includes stacking shelves and working check-outs at one of the big supermarkets. Coles and Woolworths employ many people, particularly in regional Australia.

When I was the Minister for Small Business, I had the privilege to go to Melbourne to attend a dinner where Coles hosted small-business operators from around the country and handed out awards to the best of those. Those businesses would not have had the opportunity to put their stock, their goods and the endeavours of their hard work on national supermarket shelves if it weren't for Coles—the case with Woolworths is similar— and owed those supermarkets for that opportunity. It's easy to kick, and kick hard, when the pile on is happening. We've seen it with banks, and we've seen it now with the big duopoly.

I would suggest that people make sure they look at FoodWorks, IGA and other independent grocers when considering where to buy their groceries, but it's true that grocery prices are up. The member for Melbourne was right when he said that. In fact, food has gone up 11 per cent since the Albanese government took over in May 2022. It's not just the price of food that has increased. Health costs are up 11 per cent. Education costs are up 11 per cent and housing costs are up 15 per cent.

I listened carefully to the Greens leader's contribution, and I reiterate: they are part of the problem in Melbourne, his home state. The Jacinta Allan government doesn't want gas in new homes; it doesn't want gas full stop. It is trying to ban the logging industry. What are we going to build homes with? It's hard enough to get the metal joists and the metal brackets for homes, which are often imported, with the Greens' mad policies of jacking up the price of power and jacking up the prices of everything else. How does a new homebuyer get into the market? It's almost impossible. Then we have his offsider, the member for Brisbane, running around suggesting that it's all the Commonwealth's problem. In fact, a large lot of it has to do with development applications at local government level and with social housing, which is—or always was—the remit of state governments, and yet the member for Brisbane makes out: 'Vote for me. It's all going to be changed, because I will change it.' When the Prime Minister dresses him down in parliament for that very fact, I tend to agree with the leader of the country.

Under this Labor government, rent is up 15 per cent and finance and insurance are up 17 per cent. Electricity has increased 22 per cent since May 2022. And here we had a prime minister, prior to being elected, saying on no less than 97 occasions that he was going to put in place a $275 cut to power bills and that prices would be lower under a Labor government than what was happening under the coalition. It was all a folly. It was just a lure to get votes, and it was misplaced. Ask anyone whether they're paying more now than what they were under the coalition government and the resounding answer will be: yes, they are. People are poorer. Gas is up 25 per cent. How do household budgets, industry, farms, factories and small business afford such cost increases?

The 2024-25 budget handed down by the member for Rankin was an election sweetener, and not a very good one. We see the fact that no Labor members are coming in to defend it. No Labor members are out there promoting it, and why would they? Why would you promote a dead, stinking cat? That is basically what it is. It is not providing hope. It is not providing a future or a vision for this country, certainly not for those workers that the once-proud Labor Party stood for. No, it's not the case.

Regional, rural and remote Australians have missed out again. It's only the Liberals and the Nationals who look out for them, thanks to the member for Dickson's fantastic budget-in-reply speech. Not only was it a very good speech on his feet on the floor of parliament, but his speech at a function later that night was one of the best examples of having a vision for this country from opposition that I have had the privilege of listening to, and I've heard a few.

Labor, we know, have stayed true to their ethos—that is, spin, bereft of substance, particularly for those in rural and regional Australia. I really worry about irrigation communities. Those river communities, I might add, grow the food and the fibre that put the breakfast, lunch and dinner on our plates and the clothes on our backs, not just for this country but for many others too. I really worry for those people, those hard-working farmers. In the budget papers, the amount of money to be spent on water buybacks was marked NFP: not for publication. That is a great disturbing element for our farmers, because they know not how much water will be bought out of those communities—Deniliquin, Griffith, Hillston, Coleambally, Leeton, Narrandera and all the rest. The concern there is not just for farmers. They'll get the big cheque. The market will be distorted. The price will go up because of the Commonwealth entering the water buying. What will happen, though, is that the local hairdresser, the cafe and the schools will all suffer because there are fewer people and less economic activity in those communities. Labor uses the guise of doing it for the environment. They have taxpayer funded ads on the television, and people in regional Australia get quite insulted by the ads saying they're not good stewards of the environment. That is the inference in these advertisements.

Even the supposed tax cuts that Labor is putting in—it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. They're taking with one hand and then giving just a little bit back with the other. They call it a tax cut, but they are promoting it via a huge multimillion dollar advertisement splurge. It's not necessary. It is just a waste of money. They'd be better off spending it on regional health and regional education. Goodness knows—if you looked at the NAPLAN figures this morning, a third of children are unable to read or write at an acceptable level. And then you've got television spruiking Labor's budget. It wasn't a good budget. It simply wasn't a good budget. It was a typical Labor budget. Labor is always about the politics, always about the re-election tactics, never about the outcomes and the people.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 11:4 1