Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Listening to those opposite, you'd think that all is absolutely fabulous out and about across Australia. Let me tell you as a senator for Western Australia—come out to any supermarket or anywhere Australians are spending money. In Western Australia, retail sales were down 30 per cent last month because the cost of living is biting, and it is biting hard. I'll challenge any one of you over there to come with Senator O'Sullivan and me out into the suburbs of Perth and out into rural and regional Australia, and you just trot out that rubbish about how great life is under you. It demonstrably is complete and utter lies.

If you think that people aren't feeling the cost-of-living pressure through your inflationary measures, like increased interest rates, then come and speak to real Australians, because let me tell you what they're telling us. They are saying that they are struggling to pay for their groceries. They are having to make incredibly difficult choices each and every day about how they feed their families. They are struggling to pay their power bills, because you promised you would reduce them by $275, and instead they have gone up, and up and up. It's not only individuals and their families; it is businesses, large and small, who are struggling with all of these inflationary pressures that you've put on our economy.

They are struggling to pay for their mortgages. As we have heard, 800,000 Australians and many tens of thousands of Western Australians are about to come off fixed interest rate mortgages, and they will be struggling even further. You are doing nothing but putting further pressure on interest rates and inflation. Western Australians are not only struggling to build a house or to afford a mortgage; they are also struggling to pay their rent, with the increased unavailability of houses to rent. They are not taking holidays, and they are working significant overtime. In fact, 12 per cent of Western Australians who are renting are looking to downsize their rental property. Of course, they can't find any, because the McGowan government has been completely derelict in providing greater housing stock and rental stocks in Western Australia.

The Albanese Labor government is demonstrably putting pressure on the costs of living of all Western Australians. Please take up our offer; we will take you—won't we, Senator O'Sullivan?—to any shopping centre in Western Australia. You should talk to real Australians and tell them what tripe you've just put out here in this Senate. It is complete and utter rubbish. Of course, Western Australians, who deserve far better from this current government in terms of helping them with their costs of living, are also subject to the complete dereliction of the McGowan Labor government. So in Western Australia we have a double whammy. Again, if you're concerned about health care, come and talk to Western Australians about the tragedies that impact on every family now in Australia.

They're not only struggling with their health care and their cost of living; our hospitals in Western Australia, despite record funding from us when we were in government, are at breaking point. We now have thousands and thousands of sick and injured Western Australians who have to sit for hours and hours outside the emergency room not because the state government doesn't have enough money. It's because it cannot manage its doctors and nurses and make beds available. Western Australians deserve so much better.

For example, the WA state Labor government promised a lot on infrastructure—they've had record surpluses—and yet they are not spending the money on health care. They've spent six years delivering supposedly better rail, the METRONET, and guess what? After six years and about three times the budget blowout, there is not a single train on any of those tracks yet, and people in outer suburbs who are already feeling the cost-of-living pressure are still having to pay exorbitant amounts and spend time transporting themselves to their places of work.

Again, I have to note, in terms of Western Australia and Western Australians deserving better, that our premier there is so out of touch. He made comments today on Carnarvon, saying he went there recently. But he actually was there for a fly-in fly-out 18 months ago to do a publicity stunt, and he hasn't been up there since to have a look at the devastation of alcohol and many of the other social issues that are plaguing Carnarvon. Western Australians deserve better from both state— (Time expired)