Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Under the Albanese Labor government, Australia's living standards have fallen off a cliff. New analysis shows that Australian households will continue to feel the pain of 12 rate rises under Labor for many more years to come, with no relief in sight. The Prime Minister is taking our country in the wrong direction. How can Australians possibly afford another three years of Labor?

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

I thank the member for Durack for her question. The member for Durack represents a vast electorate, and it has been my pleasure to be there recently in Geraldton talking to the lobster farmers at the co-op, who, because of what we have done on trade and jobs, have a future. That's a direct result of the work that we have done, including with the foreign minister and the trade minister.

The member for Durack asks me about what has happened in the last 2½ years with regard to living standards, and that invites me to talk about the facts. The fact is that, when we came to office, the inflation figure had a six in front of it and was rising. Today's monthly figures show that it's 2.1 and falling. The fact is that the member for Durack was a part, sometimes as a minister, of spending nine years in government creating the problems, but they've spent every day in opposition stopping the solutions or trying to stop the solutions. Their cuts, their waste and their neglect left Australia wide open to global uncertainty, and now they want to go further.

Those opposite want to cut what is helping and punish people who are struggling. They want to claw back the tax cuts that we've delivered, close the Medicare urgent care clinics that we've opened, stop the housing projects that we've started, take away the help with power bills which today's figures show have made a difference and which households deserve, push up the price of medicines that people need, and rip away the pay rises that we have delivered through 'same job, same pay' and through the work with early childhood educators, aged-care workers and people on the minimum wage. They want to rip all that away and derail the progress that we've made on renewables so they can burn hundreds of billions of dollars on some plan to deliver into the 2040s what will be less than four per cent of the energy that Australia needs. When they come in here, all they do is stand in the way and take things away. They only have two settings: 'no' and 'no way'. They are the only settings that they have.

We on this side of the House showed today with Help to Buy that we're about construction; they showed once again that they're about obstruction. That's the difference between the two sides of this chamber. We're building Australia's future; they're blocking the Australian dream. They not only don't support public housing but they don't support people into homeownership either. They certainly don't support rental assistance. They have no way forward for Australia—just more reckless negativity and inaction— (Time expired)