Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We've been focused, Senator Smith, on creating jobs—over 880,000 of them—and getting wages moving again after a decade in which those opposite embraced low wages as a deliberate design feature of your economy. Those are the things that we have been focused on: downward pressure on inflation, cost-of-living relief, creating jobs and getting wages moving. It's a good thing, at five minutes past five on the last sitting day of this last sitting week of the session, that we're focused now on those things that Australians care about.

What Australians can see from our government is two years of budget management designed to put downward pressure on inflation: We are the government that has delivered two surpluses back to back, not those opposite. That is because we've made the hard decisions about how to return revenue to the budget bottom line, and we've done that exercising fiscal constraint in line with the RBA's monetary policy. What we have been focused on is putting downward pressure on inflation through our tight fiscal management of the budget.

Of course, we have been focused on providing cost-of-living relief too. We know that Australians are doing it tough out there. We know the inflation challenge is real here in Australia, just as it is around the world, and the cost-of-living measures that come into effect this week in Australia are going to make a huge difference to people's lives. Our tax cuts for 13.6 million Australians will make a huge difference to people's lives. An average of $1,800 a year is being returned to people to help them deal with the challenges that they face. It's over $3,000 for many families, along with the $300 energy rebate, which is really going to help people with their power bills this winter. It's $325 for small businesses. That energy bill relief is working in concert with the measures we've put in place to put downward pressure on energy prices, including capping prices, which those opposite rejected and tried to vote against.

The best thing that we can do to put downward pressure on energy bills is to get more of the cheapest energy into the grid, and that, far and away, is renewable energy, and all of those opposite know that. Instead, they've come to the parliament with a plan, developed, it seems, by the new Leader of the Opposition—and I know it's important to get people's names and titles right in this place. I think the appropriate title of the new Leader of the Opposition is the member for Maranoa, Mr Littleproud. I think that's the new Leader of the Opposition, who has apparently brought this nuclear plan to the coalition. This is a plan to raise your energy bills. That is what this is a plan to do. We know that nuclear is far and away the most expensive form of energy that there is and that this is a plan from those opposite to delay energy transition in this country by two decades and to then embrace the most expensive form of power that is out there. It is nuclear stupidity. That is what this policy is.

In addition to putting downward pressure on inflation, putting downward pressure on energy bills, getting cheaper renewable energy in the grid and providing cost-of-living relief with our tax cuts, which will make a huge difference to people's lives, what we on this side care about is creating jobs and getting wages moving, and that's exactly what we are doing.