Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was pretty tough this question time to sit through the faux concern around Labor's policies on energy—particularly our policies on power prices—when we've just sat through a decade that had 22 failed attempts to deliver an energy policy in this country. Those failed attempts weren't just a catastrophic failure of policy aptitude; they also left businesses and many in our community without the certainty they needed to make investment decisions or decisions on behalf of their businesses to drive investment and growth. That lack of policy certainty has left us behind on an international scale when it comes to Australian businesses and our approach and our responses to climate change.

For a decade, we saw the other side argue about whether climate change existed—not doing the hard and detailed policy work required to deliver an energy policy that would deliver certainty to Australian businesses. That's what they now have under an Albanese Labor government. Already, we've legislated 43 per cent by 2030 and net zero 30 by 2050. These are policies enshrined by law to give that certainty to our business community and to drive investment in renewable energy and technology. That's backed up by our Powering Australia policy, which is designed to put more energy into the grid—renewable energy, which is our cheapest form of energy and which will put pressure on energy prices.

I would argue that the concern expressed in question time today was faux concern. If they were really concerned about getting the policy levers in place to make a meaningful difference on energy prices and, indeed, on climate change, they would have spent the last decade designing an energy policy they could deliver. That's not to say that the impact of energy prices at the moment on the cost-of-living challenges before us is not very real and not serious—of course it is. That's something our government is looking at and work is underway, as Minister Gallagher said in question time today. That's in addition to other measures we're taking to address the cost-of-living crisis, measures like making access to early learning and education more affordable for over one million families. That piece of legislation is being worked through the Senate today. And we're expanding paid parental leave by six months to 2026, and delivering cheaper medicines and more affordable housing. And yes, as was discussed today, we're getting wages moving again.

Unlike the other side, where keeping wages low was a deliberate feature of the economic architecture, we are unashamedly keen to get wages moving again. We have supported an increase to the minimum wage and we've supported a wage rise for aged-care workers. But there is more work to do to fix the broken bargaining system that we are currently dealing with in Australia, and that's what the legislation—that I hope we would be debating in this chamber soon—will seek to deal with. It will address wages for workers like our early childhood workers, who do some of the most important work in our country: nation-building life-changing work. Their wages have failed to keep up with the value that they contribute to our community. We need to fix the broken bargaining system so we can support workers like our early childhood workers and, indeed, many low-paid workers across our economy who are being left behind by our current industrial relations system. So I welcome a debate on that and I welcome the debate which will happen in this chamber in the next few weeks.

The other Senator Smith mentioned that today is the six-month anniversary of the Albanese Labor government, and it's an anniversary which I think is worth celebrating. Already our government has taken significant action to fix the mess and the failures of the previous government over the past decade—failures in aged care, failures in early learning and failures in wages, and in fixing our overseas relationships. Overwhelmingly, what I hear most often as I travel around South Australia is that it finally feels like adults are in charge of the government and doing the work people expect their government to be doing. That's what our government is about, not feigning faux concern over policies. Those opposite actually had a decade to do something about it; if they really genuinely cared about getting wages moving then they wouldn't have made low wages a deliberate feature of the economic architecture. If they really cared about tackling energy prices and tackling climate change then they would have delivered an energy policy one time among those 22 attempts—a policy which actually worked and delivered for Australians. It's faux concern; we're doing real work.