Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, I don't have the full 15 minutes after ceding some ground to Senator O'Neill, but, listening to both Senator O'Neill and Senator Sterle, I'd suggest that Australians should be thanking the ALP. If you listen to them, apparently Australians have never had it so good. 'Cost-of-living crisis? What are you talking about? We've fixed it! It's all done! Everyone is better off.' I put the call out again—I've done it before; I'm still waiting to hear from someone—can anyone who is better off, who can, hand on heart, say, 'I'm better off than I was 15 months ago,' please tell me. I want to know someone whose mortgage has gone down. I want to know someone whose power price has gone down. I want to know someone whose grocery bills have gone down. I want to know someone whose wages have kept up with the increased cost-of-living pressures. But, of course, those people don't exist.

I really don't have a lot of time, and I'm not one to do this, but I want to go through some of the points that Senator O'Neill made, because they are just farcical. On rent assistance, she mentioned 'the biggest increase in 30 years'. I'll tell you why: it was the biggest increase, in line with inflation. That's why it's a big increase—it's directly linked to inflation.

On cheaper child care, go and talk to someone who is trying to get a child into child care. There are no spots. You can't say it's cheaper child care if you can't get your kid in. And then what has happened is childcare centres have just put their fees up. So cheaper child care is just a complete and utter fallacy. All that's happened is that taxpayers are funding out more to childcare providers. There are no extra spots and parents are still paying the exact same price, if not more.

After announced increases in bulk-billing, the next day doctors across the country were in a series of newspaper saying, 'We welcome the increase in the Medicare rebate, but we are certainly not going to accept that as our entire fee; we still will not be bulk-billing.' So that was a furphy.

What about cheaper medicines? If you can go and get two months worth of medicines the medicines actually cost the same. So if you have a script that is $20 a month and all of a sudden you can access two months it's still $20 a month. What changes is the dispensing fee that impacts the pharmacy. So when they say, 'Isn't it good that you don't have to go the pharmacy so often?' the hilarious thing about that is that that's going to close down a heap of pharmacies and so people will probably have to go further when they do have to go to the pharmacy. We know that some of the doctors operate as a pseudo union. They're not writing the scripts for longer. So you can have the medicines apparently because your condition is stable for a longer period, but the GPs won't write the script for longer periods, even though they are saying you are stable, because they want to click that Medicare ticket but won't bulk-bill those people who are having to still go to the doctor.

On mental health, the government has cut the services in half. The government cut the 20 services that could be accessed per year to 10 in record speed as we came out of a pandemic that is internationally recognised to have caused significant mental health harm across the world to many, many societies but particularly to our younger members. So what did this government do? As soon as they get in, they absolutely decimated mental health.

I also just listened to Senator O'Neill speaking to us about young families. I have children. I don't know; would you call them middle-aged now they are teenagers? They are at that midway point. They are not superyoung anymore. I had lunch with another autism mum this week. We quite often talk about the challenges we face and, as our boys are growing up, how it looks. The new IR laws that are being proposed are actually going to decimate an already superthin disability market by making it absolutely impossible to navigate for a number of platforms, a number of providers, but particularly families of a child with a disability. These are going to affect how they can negotiate with their own therapist on how it's going work. Now they are going to be told that they have to pay at the top, possibly, of the NDIS price guide, removing the flexibility, removing the choice and control principles of the NDIS and, in fact, adding to increased pressures on the NDIS funding. So if you are a young family with a kid with a disability, the IR reforms are about to make your life a whole lot harder.

Then we keep hearing references to a 'surplus'. You know what the surplus is due to? It is due to the resources sector. So the government might want to say a big old thankyou to coal and those coalminers that generate jobs and economic activity and actually form a big part of those free trade agreements that Senator Farrell was so keen to talk about. People love our coal. They also love our gas. The resources sector is doing so well it has delivered a surplus. Again, it's not due to anything the government did.

It's like the Great Barrier Reef. We were told by those opposite when they were in opposition that the Barrier Reef would never come to again, that it was dead, decimated, being destroyed and all finished. Then we spent $1.2 billion and actually invested in the reef over the nine years we were in government and now it's regenerated. Coral takes a little bit longer than 15 months to grow. You wouldn't know that if you listened to those on the other side.

We know that $275 is the number that shall not speak its name. It was promised 97 times by the Prime Minister. But the new word that shall not be spoken is 'treaty'. Is this just another broken promise by this government to the people that it said it was all about? It was about the Voice, treaty and truth-telling—but now the Prime Minister's using code and sneaking his way out of it and no-one will say the word. It's absolutely disgusting behaviour by a disgusting government.

Senator O'Neill just said that they hit the ground running. I'm sure there are plenty of Australians that own businesses that can't pay their bills and can't pay their mortgages that are looking at increasing costs everywhere they go and having problems every day while being lectured by this government that they have never had it so good are hoping not only that they hit the ground running next election but that they run right back out the door so the grown-ups can get back in charge and stop this absolute destruction of the Australian economy and Australian community from absolutely appalling and pathetic behaviour.

Debate interrupted.