Slade Brockman (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 coalition senators today.

I'd like to say there's an embarrassment of riches, but there is an embarrassment of failures on the other side when we look at the variety of questions asked from this side of the chamber on a variety of serious issues impacting the people of Australia and the litany of failures from those opposite across a range of portfolio areas.

We could talk about the national security issue or the asylum seeker problems and the litany of failures that we've had there. It's now clear from the High Court judgement that the 140 people who were released from detention didn't necessarily need to be if the government had been stronger in its approach to national security issues. We've seen repeated attacks by those opposite on the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, because he is someone who, while in government, showed strength in this area. They're attacking the person rather than the policy. They've had little to say, in fact, in relation to their own policy because it has been so disorganised, chaotic, jumbled and incoherent. As I said in a previous contribution, they were like a rabbit in the spotlight; they froze for a week following the High Court decision. They couldn't work out whether they needed legislation or whether they didn't. They couldn't work out whether they wanted to look strong and try to respond or whether they wanted to play to the far-left end of the political spectrum. As a result, they sat there on their hands while the Australian people were put at risk.

But what I was actually going to talk about was the cost of living! That's because it's the issue which is brought up the most with me in meetings across my home state of Western Australia. I'm sure Senator O'Sullivan would agree with me on this: the first and last topic that people bring up is the cost-of-living pressure on Australian families and on Australian small businesses. We've seen the current and persistent high inflation which those opposite, those in the government, seem to want to wear as a badge of success. But when core inflation is still 5.3 per cent in this economy, that's not a badge of success—that's a badge of pain. It's a badge of pain for every Australian family out there: everyone who is paying off a mortgage, everyone who is struggling with their grocery bills during the week and everyone who is thinking twice about filling up their car with petrol. They're having to tell their kids that playing sport is just a bit too much, that their budget can't hold it. Christmas is less than a month away and Australian families out there are suffering.

Whilst this government want to talk about what they've done, the fact is that their talking points are the same talking points that we on this side heard three months ago, six months ago and nine months ago. I think I first raised inflation as a topic in this place in August of last year, and the talking points they're using today are still the same ones. What have they done? Cheaper child care. The fact is that when I talked to a member of the Western Australian community just yesterday, their childcare costs had gone up, and it's because this is government doesn't understand the way their policies interact with the real world—

I'll take that interjection, Senator O'Sullivan. As he said, this is a government which just can't manage the economy. It has left all the heavy lifting to the Reserve Bank of Australia, which means that interest rates in Australia will stay higher for longer than they otherwise would have to be. That's the legacy of this Labor government, and every Australian family is going to feel at this Christmas.

Those opposite know it. They're trying to pretend otherwise; they're trying to spread some justification for their current policy positions. They're trying to pretend that their policy on energy has actually brought energy prices down, when every Australian family knows it has actually pushed them up. They're trying to pretend that they're doing things to help Australian families, when every Australian family knows that the cost of living has gone up massively and that their real standard of living has plummeted.