Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bragg for the opportunity to contribute and to talk about the answers given by Senator Gallagher—and Senator Farrell, although we asked Senator Farrell that question. I'm a big fan of tourism, so I'm glad to be able to have that opportunity; thank you, Senator Bragg! Yes, it would be good to have more young people in parliament, and I congratulate Senator Payman on her election at 27 years old. She's going to make a fantastic senator, hopefully for many years to come.

The answers given by Minister Gallagher around our cost-of-living issues are important. We know that people in this country are hurting, and we know that this is a difficult economic time. It is a difficult set of economic books that we inherited from the previous government. These questions gave Minister Gallagher another opportunity to update the Senate on the economic situation that we are facing. It is very important that Australians understand—and I believe that they do understand this and that's why the members opposite are sitting on those benches now—that we inherited $1 trillion of Liberal debt. We are committed to fiscal responsibility, unlike those opposite.

Those opposite will tell you that that debt was incurred at a time when they couldn't possibly have not spent that money, but we know that they doubled the debt before COVID-19. They had doubled the debt before the COVID-19 crisis. We've inherited high inflation, rising interest rates and historically low wages because those opposite were not invested in lifting real wages and not interested in making sure that the minimum wage would rise. That's why we've got a situation now of high inflation and low wages. Those opposite were the highest-spending and highest-borrowing government in Australia. This is the really important point that Senator Gallagher made today, and those opposite would do well to listen—maybe before their next tactics meeting! It was how they spent their money that Australians really noticed. They spent that money in rorts, in colour coded spreadsheets and in buying off the National Party, and they did that in a systematic way. All they cared about was themselves, not delivering for all Australians.

That's not what the Albanese Labor government will be doing. We've already started the really hard work of dealing with the cost-of-living crisis. The Albanese Labor government secured an increase to the minimum wage—finally. Finally, for minimum-wage workers, we've increased the minimum wage by putting forward a genuine and sympathetic proposal to the Fair Work Commission. It was our first step in our plan to get real wages moving. On top of that, we've got a plan to reduce the cost of vital medicines to make them cheaper, cutting the maximum co-payment under the PBS by 29 per cent. We're also making it easier to get access to bulk billed health care, with the establishment of 50 urgent care clinics.

And, of course, as we know, we are improving access to and affordability of early childhood education. We know this will be instrumental for our economy. I'm always interested by the response from those opposite in regard to Labor's childcare policy of investing in child care and making child care cheaper. This is possibly not a view shared by everyone on the other side, but on this side we know that investing in child care is an economic policy. It's an economic policy because it saves families money and it gets people back to work. More affordable child care means more opportunities for families to increase their weekly pay. As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, this is a plan for reform that will deliver economic potential. It just makes sense.

Australians can also be assured that we are addressing the skills crisis. Senator Farrell today addressed the skills crisis that we have in our tourism industry right now, something that the former government refused to acknowledge or address in their time. The very first piece of legislation we introduced was to create Jobs and Skills Australia so that we could get on with the work of getting Australians into work. Jobs and Skills Australia will be pivotal for the economy and our economic recovery as we recover from 10 years of neglect, mistakes and mess, from $1 trillion of debt and from the rorts and waste that the previous government left behind for every Australian.