Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Albanese government has a three-point plan for addressing the inflation challenges in our economy. It's about relief, repair and restraint. It's about responsible cost-of-living relief, cheaper child care, cheaper medicines and direct energy bill relief. It's about repairing supply-side constraints with our fee-free TAFE policy for students across the country and cleaner and cheaper energy. We're establishing the National Reconstruction Fund, and there will be more affordable housing with the Housing Australia Future Fund. We have a responsible budget with spending restraint, returning almost all revenue upgrades to the bottom line and keeping spending essentially flat over the next four years to not add to inflation. That's our plan.

We understand that the rising cost of living is hitting a lot of Australians hard, and it's being driven by the illegal invasion in Ukraine. One of the very first acts of the Albanese Labor government was to successfully argue for the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, an outcome which helped around 2.7 million Australians. We're always better when we back Australians to have better pay and conditions, and we will back Australians every single day, unlike those opposite. All those opposite want to do is drive down wages. We had nine long years of exactly that policy from the Liberal-National government.

Our budget focused on responsible cost-of-living relief that didn't put extra pressure on inflation. Our commitment as a government and as responsible economic managers is for cheaper child care, expanded paid parental leave, cheaper medicines and more affordable housing, and we are committed to closing the gender pay gap and getting wages moving again. That's what the Australian people know they can count on a Labor government for. Rating agencies have affirmed our AAA credit rating and pointed to the fact that our first budget not adding to inflation was a factor in their decisions.

Terms of trade are improving. We have the Minister for Trade and Tourism with us in the chamber tonight, and what a fantastic job he's been doing in rebuilding trade with our neighbours and across the globe. You couldn't get a better trade minister, unlike those who were in government for nine years. The best trade deal that those opposite ever did and that they claim credit for is running manufacturing out of this country.

Now we have acted to take some of the sting out of the higher power prices, including through direct energy bill relief in the next budget and direct support for households and businesses, which the opposition tried to block. There are encouraging signs that our plan is beginning to work, with big drops in prices on the electricity futures market. We're also focused on growing the economy in the right way so that many Australians can benefit from good skills, get good jobs and have good wages. Manufacturing will come back to Australia with our national reconstruction policy.

All week those opposite have come into this place and given their best Brothers Grimm impressions. We've had scary fairy tales about what this government is and isn't doing and has and hasn't done, but the reality is that those opposite are the opposition best known for saying no. They're quickly becoming the 'no-alition-—that's who they are. They have nothing positive to contribute to our national debate. What they want to do is come in here and try to rewrite history and smudge over the failings, chaos and mismanagement of a government in which the Prime Minister couldn't even trust his foreign minister and five other ministers, who he felt he needed to take control of.