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

I am very pleased to stand here today in the Senate and contribute to this matter of public importance debate on the cost of living. That's because, as we head into the final sitting week of this year, the Albanese Labor government isn't slowing down on delivering its election commitments. Over the next fortnight, we will be implementing our $7.5 billion five-point cost-of-living plan. We will be delivering cheaper child care, cheaper medicines, more generous paid parental leave and more affordable housing and we will get wages moving again. In just six short months, the Albanese Labor government has taken more action on the cost of living than the previous government did in almost a decade.

Just in the chamber today we were talking about cheaper child care. This is just one of those steps that we are taking. These changes will have material impacts for around 96 per cent of families who use early childhood education. Labor's plan for cheaper child care will make it more affordable for around 1.26 million Australian families.

But it's not just cheaper child care that we are delivering. Our cost-of-living plan won't just reduce those costs; it will also put Australians back on track for real pay rises. That is because our Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill goes right to the heart of the cost-of-living challenges Australians are facing right now. Australia's current workplace laws are not working to deliver meaningful wage increases. No-one has forgotten that under the previous government, under those opposite, it was a deliberate design feature to keep wages low. The hypocrisy for those opposite to come in here and talk about cost of living while at the same time having a design feature to keep wages low is not lost on everyday Australians.

The hypocrisy continues when it comes to the discussion around electricity prices in this place because the former government had 22 energy policies. They had 22 over nine years, and those incoherent, inconsistent, uncertain policies led to three changes in the Liberal leadership, possibly two in the National Party, and to direct results of disunity on energy policy. They couldn't get their act together for 10 years, and now they want to come in here and lecture us. This is their record on electricity prices: complete disunity on net zero and vetoing renewable energy projects, which would have created jobs, although renewable energy is the most affordable energy source in the market. They promised to build a coal fired power station in North Queensland, but that was just a press release. They never actually did that. They hid key information about electricity prices from the Australian public, information about the rises in electricity.

This is not only a problem of the former government; it's followed them through to opposition because we know that the opposition still has climate deniers in their ranks, politicians that come into this place with their graphs downloaded from some pokey part of the internet. Now their answer, after having no solutions for a decade, seems to be to offer nuclear power as a solution. Only a couple of weeks ago in estimates the CSIRO said that nuclear wasn't a competitive option and that it would take until the next decade to get it up and running. This is the solution from those opposite, the most expensive form of power that will take us into the next decade to establish.

We know that renewable energy is the cheapest form of power. That is why we are delivering our Powering Australia plan. We know that this country needs certainty when it comes to energy policies, which is why we are delivering our plan for Australians. What you will see from those opposite is hypocrisy when it comes to energy prices and the cost of living. I appreciate I'm about to be followed in this place by the Venn diagram of conspiracy theorists about climate change and throwing in anti-vax as well, but I just want to make this clear: when it comes to the facts on energy policy—