Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition will be supporting the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (More Support in the Safety Net) Bill 2024. But, sadly, two years in, Australians are paying the price for a succession of bad decisions and wrong priorities by this government. We will be supporting these measures because Australians are poorer after two years of Labor government. Australians have rarely in our history been able to look back from one election to the next—without overstating it, without overblowing it, without trying to throw the political rhetoric out there—and say, 'We are actually poorer than we were at the last election.' Sadly, that is what will happen at the time of the next election.

We will support the proposals from the government. These include, in schedule 1 of the bill, increasing Commonwealth rent assistance; in schedule 2 of the bill, making some very minor amendments, including some flexibility amendments, to JobSeeker arrangements; and, in schedule 3 of the bill, improving access to work and providing greater flexibility for those on carer payments. It's pretty uncontroversial stuff, but it's a bandaid on the bullet wound of what's being felt by Australians throughout the country under this Labor government.

If you've got the average mortgage in Australia today, you're $35,000 worse off. After three budgets, we've seen terrible stewardship of the economy. We now have more core inflation, and the fact that we have homegrown inflation is troubling even the hard heads in the government. In the immediate aftermath of COVID, clearly the Australian economy was hit by inflation that had flowed from the supply chain issues and material shortages that were global phenomena. We wore the pain and did as every other trading nation in the world did, but what's occurring now is actually homegrown inflation. Whilst inflation is going backwards in almost every competitor country in the world, or in most economies that we would compare ourselves to, we now have inflation remaining stubbornly high here in Australia, and that means interest rates will have to be higher for longer. That's an immutable fact. It doesn't matter how much the Treasurer tries to spin this; the reason why this is relevant to the bill is that ultimately the Social Services portfolio is trying to paper over the cracks that are emerging because of the terrible mismanagement of the Australian economy by the Albanese Labor government.

The truth is that no social services budget or portfolio measure can ultimately paper over the gaping cracks occurring in the economy right now, which are hitting families extraordinarily hard. The truth is that food prices are up by more than 10 per cent and the cost of housing is up by 14 per cent. This year, from April to April, in the housing sector we've seen rents rise by nearly eight per cent. Since the government have been in power, we've seen rent increases of more than 20 per cent on average. If the average is 20 per cent, I can say right now that there are many parts of the country where rents are up by 25, 30, 35 or even 40 per cent. There's nothing that the social services minister can do, even with a modest increase to Commonwealth rent assistance, to address the issues that are before Australians at the moment.

There's nothing the social services minister can do to assist families which have an average mortgage and are paying $35,000 more than when this government came to power. That doesn't even account for those families—those in metropolitan Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and in most of our metro areas in particular—who have mortgages well above the average. These people will literally be spending tens of thousands of dollars more to service their mortgage and put a roof over the heads of their families.

We're supporting this bill, but what Australians don't want to see is the self-congratulatory patting on the back that we see every single day by this government—about how they're doing wonderful things for the Australian people. People are struggling out there and in a way I've never seen in my lifetime. Sadly, this is something that we often see with federal Labor governments. Labor are always saying, 'We just have very bad timing.' The poor, old Labor governments just have bad timing. They think that they just inherit these difficult circumstances. No, you don't inherit them after two years in government and after three budgets; you are making this problem. Your difficult circumstances are your own fault.

The lack of budget strategy and lack of strategy to put downward pressure on inflation and to reduce interest rates mean there is nothing the poor social services minister can do to address and alleviate the issues that are being faced by some of our most vulnerable Australians. Before the election, we were promised by her Prime Minister no fewer than 97 times that he would reduce power prices by $275 per household each and every year, and that was for the level it was in 2022. Power prices are now up by more than $2,000 since that time. We all thought it was pretty heroic for the Prime Minister to make those promises before the election, but, no, that's how he sold himself to the Australian electorate. Some of us wondered if there was something that he knew that we didn't know or if he had something up his sleeve that we didn't. Well, no, the truth is that the Prime Minister clearly made a decision to say whatever he needed to say to deceive the Australian public and get them to vote for him, while he knew that he would not be able to deliver thereafter. What do we see now? We see electricity prices up by 20 per cent and gas prices up by 25 per cent. Again, there is nothing the social services minister can do on her own to address the pain that is being felt by Australians.

I'll finish where I started. After two years of an Albanese Labor government, Australians are poorer than they were when the government came in. That's not open to interpretation. There wouldn't be anybody in Australia who would argue with that—apart, perhaps, from those opposite. It's not an area that you would be able to credibly debate politically, even if you tried. Australians are poorer than they were two years ago. The dollar doesn't go as far as it did two years ago. Housing costs are demonstrably higher than they were two years ago. Real wages have gone backwards under this government. On every single metric, Australians are doing it tougher than they were when the Albanese Labor government came to power just two years ago. So the Minister for Social Services and this government are not going to get a pat on the back from us for giving a tiny bit back with one hand when they have taken a massive amount away with the other hand over the past two years, from households and from Australians who are really struggling.