Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

In my contribution, I particularly want to take note of the answer given by Senator Watt to Senator Birmingham's question in relation to the cost of living. What we heard from Senator Watt was just a lot of words, really, and a lot of plans to have a plan. When asked what they were doing to address the cost of living, he said, 'We're taking action,' but there was actually no reference to anything they've done or anything specific that they're going to do that will tangibly deliver reduced cost-of-living pressure on Australians.

Now, we all know that out there in the real world, outside of this place, people are doing it tough. Interest rates have been going up. For the average mortgage holder, it's about $10,000 per year in increases in interest costs. You go to the shopping centres and not only will you see that, in many cases, the shelves are empty because there are supply chain issues; but costs have gone up significantly as well. It's impacting people's ability to make ends meet. It is becoming increasingly difficult just to get by in this country, and all we're getting from this government is words. There's no substance behind anything they're saying; it's just empty rhetoric. We heard that one of the ways that they're addressing cost of living is by decreasing the cost of child care. That's all well and good if you have a childcare place, but what we know is that the empty impact of the legislation that they were able to get through this place is that it doesn't deliver any new places. There's no, there's not a single new place becoming available. Now, we know that there is a significant shortage of childcare places. With know that there's a significant issue of workforce and there's nothing that this government is doing to address those issues. So how does an increase in a subsidy assist you if you can't even get access to a childcare place?

The point that I'm making here is that they're really good at putting together some words, but Australians are starting to figure it out. The government have had a bit of a honeymoon, and I get that; people have given them the benefit of the doubt, as good, sensible Australians will do. They will give them the benefit of the doubt. But, as the pressures are really mounting on household budgets, as the pressures are really mounting on individuals trying to make ends meet, they're starting to figure out that this government is all talk and very little action. And their action is often symbolic. Their action is often talking points rather than delivering policies that will deliver real outcomes.

One of the things that they said they would do before the election was to deliver a $275 decrease to the cost of electricity, yet they've walked miles from that. They brought in some policy just before Christmas, thinking it would be some big Christmas present—another empty delivery of a promise. We're not actually seeing electricity prices going down. They're saying they're not going to go up as much as they could have. That's not going down; that's maybe limiting it a little bit. You're playing around the edges.

Australians want to see a reduction in the cost of making ends meet, and it's getting more and more difficult. This government, week by week—and we've seen this week with their agenda that we're back to filling time when it comes to government business. We're back onto the address-in-reply to the Governor-General's speech because they don't have anything. They've done the talking and found that just talking is not enough. Just filling in words and having those nice announcements and nice talking points is not enough to actually address the issues that Australians are facing. They talked about real wages going up before the election. Guess what. They won't even mention the word 'real' any more, because we're not keeping up with inflation. Inflation is out of control, and the Reserve Bank has to take the measures they're taking because they see that this lot over here haven't got the capacity to deliver real outcomes.