Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a very short time to make a contribution to this debate. Looking at the motion which Senator Bernardi moved on behalf of the coalition today, I see that the complaint is the government’s failure to address difficulties—that is, the difficulties of Australians and their financial circumstances—and yet, for almost every move that this government makes to try and address those issues, the coalition stands in the way. The coalition is saying we should do more, but what are they going to do?

We want to put in place something like Fuelwatch, which Western Australian motorists—Perth motorists—love because it allows them to know, at three o’clock the afternoon before, what the price is going to be the following day and where that price is going to be available for the whole day. Motorists in Perth do not have the experience that, on their way to work, the petrol on the other side of the road is cheaper and then, by the time they are driving home and hoping to fill up, the price is up to the price that it was on the side of the road that they were travelling past on their way to work. They do not have the experience that prices will change five, 10, 15 or 20 times a day at a particular service station because there is a game being played by those service stations trying to bid the price up or trying to pull the price down, and so motorists never know where they are.

So the coalition is saying we fail to address this issue but, when we put something up to try and help the consumer, the coalition is saying, ‘Well, we’re not going to let you do that.’ Then, when we talk about the pressures on families and the fact that we want to increase the threshold for the Medicare surcharge, which has remained the same since it was introduced—at $50,000—to provide low-income earners who are on $50,000 with some tax relief, we cannot do that either. This is the hypocrisy that the coalition is putting up in this debate. There is hypocrisy about the government doing something when, every time this government tries to do something, they use this chamber and their position in this chamber to try and block it. They did so before 30 June and now they are trying to persuade other senators to join with them to continue doing it after 30 June. So Australians are missing out.