Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. After 2½ years of this bad Albanese Labor government, working families have seen their costs of living increase by 18.9 per cent. Food is up 11.8 per cent, housing is up 11.8 per cent and gas is up 32.2 per cent. This 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'm asked to compare and contrast how Australia has performed over the last 2½ years with what would have happened had we not taken action. Shadow Treasurer, inflation had a six in front of it when we were elected. Now it has a two in front of it.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

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

Order! The member for Deakin, like any other member, is entitled to raise a point of order. No matter where you sit anyone's entitled to raise a point of order, and he's going to be given that opportunity now.

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

The point of order is on relevance. The Prime Minister has made a habit of recharacterising every question in an entirely different way to the question asked and he should be pulled up for relevance.

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

That isn't a point of order; that's a comment by the member for Deakin. As I said to the Leader of the Opposition and I have said to others during the week, I'm simply not going to have people get up and say what they feel or what they'd like to say during question time. There are rules to follow and there are standing orders to follow. You're entitled to take a point of order, and I gave you that courtesy, but you didn't show the same respect to the chamber. You simply got up and said that you didn't like how the Prime Minister was answering the question or whatever he was doing, so you're going to leave the chamber under 94(a).

The member for Deakin then left the chamber.

Opposition members interjecting—

No, we are not going to have that! If people want to make points of order, they will always be given that opportunity to do so. They will be given that out of respect. I ask the same respect to be shown by following the standing orders. Now, if the Prime Minister is going to be asked a broad question about the last 2½ years and all sorts of things, he's going to be pretty broad in his answer. The member for Hume—

The Treasurer is warned. I'm not having this today. We're not going to have this back and forth across the chamber, this freewheeling, okay? I'm going to listen to the Prime Minister. I'm going to make sure he is being directly relevant to the topic he was asked about. He can't go round the world, but I'm going to make sure he's being directly relevant.

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

Thanks very much, Mr Speaker. I'll go directly to cost of living and what we have done and what the alternative would have been. Had we not acted, 84 per cent of taxpayers would be worse off if you compare what we put in place with what they supported. If those opposite had it their way, 2.9 million taxpayers would have not got one cent. Australians who rely upon PBS medicines would be $1 billion worse off because those opposite said no to cheaper medicines. Families would have missed out on more than 900,000 free doctor appointments—sorry to mention the word 'free' because we know what their approach is there—because those opposite said no to Medicare urgent care clinics, not to mention 5.4 million extra bulk-billed appointments thanks to our tripling of the bulk-billing incentive. We'd have 2.6 million award wage workers worse off because those opposite said no to minimum wage increases that we supported.

Millions of households would be $800 worse off because those opposite said no to energy rebates, as would every small business who got those energy rebates as well. Some one million of them would be $650 worse off. More than one million families would be worse off on childcare fees because those opposite said no to cheaper child care. And three million Australians would have worse HECS debts because those opposite said no to HECS relief and have been opposed to it even this week. Half a million Australians would have missed out on free TAFE. They would not just have had to pay if they enrolled in free TAFE but would have missed out on the opportunity of betterment for themselves and their families. And thousands of workers, including Nicole, who I met, would be $34,000—that's for one worker—worse off if we didn't have same job, same pay because those opposite said no to that.

These have been difficult times and we understand that people have been doing it tough. The difference between the government and the opposition is that we've taken measures to assist people. Those opposite have just said no to everything.