Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to repeat this simple, self-evident truth. The Turnbull government will not bother itself to tackle the ever-extending list of cost-of-living challenges its leadership has forced upon all Australians. As Bill Shorten said last month: 'Workers' share of income is at its lowest levels in half a century'. There is less money in their pay packet and less security in their job. More and more Australians are part time or casualised and are denied a proper income that they could live on. They are able to be dismissed, put off or have their contract varied at any time.

Our out-of-pocket childcare costs have risen every year under the Abbott-Turnbull government. Despite their childcare changes, the government's own figures show fees are set to keep rising at over five per cent a year—well above wages. But the Turnbull government doesn't care about addressing inequality. It has no plans and no interest in addressing people's life circumstances, not because it can't, but because it won't. Helping Australians with cost-of-living challenges is simply not in this government's DNA. This is the party that has spent nearly half a decade talking up tax cuts for millionaires and multinationals, while, at the same time, applauding tax cuts to wages and implementing cuts to basic services. They haven't advanced climate policy or energy policy and the problems of housing affordability and negative gearing are untouched. Multinationals still do not have to pay their fair share of tax. There's an income tax cut for the top bracket and penalty rate cuts for the lowest tax bracket.

However, there's another truth in this parliament and it is the truth about the Labor Party. The Labor Party works for a fair and more equal society. It is the truth about us that we always have and we always will. There is only one party interested in improving the lives of all Australians: it is the Labor Party. The Labor Party is prepared not only to recognise inequality as the most serious threat to our health as an economy and our cohesion as a society but to set out and take the necessary steps that will actually address it.

As Bill Shorten has said, Labor will tackle inequality and restore the confidence so desperately needed in our economy. Labor will work with business to drive the industries that deliver decent jobs that people can build a life around and gain a mortgage around and so that they can form meaningful relationships and have dreams and hopes for their future and their children's future. Labor will have the courage to end the toxic politics created by this government on climate and energy policy, which will create the certainty needed to boost investment and drive down energy costs. Labor will put the great Australian dream of owning your own home back within the reach of working and middle-class Australians. Labor will invest in Medicare, in dental care and in our healthcare system, so that Australians are healthier at home and, of course, more productive at work. We will do what this government refuses to do.

This government continues to ignore the issues and the challenges facing Australians, to ignore the facts of inequality. In fact, Senator Cormann doesn't even think that there is an inequality problem. He actually thinks inequality is getting better, despite what the Governor of the Reserve Bank claims to admit. Well, the Labor Party knows very well that as long as the Turnbull government continues to govern for the people of Australia, inequality will worsen and Australians will be the worse off.

Labor will do what this government has refused to do, because we will always stand on the side of fairness and we will always stand on the side of decency for all Australians. We will reward hard work. We will invest in the future and ensure that Australia, once again, does indeed become the country of the fair go.