Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge the Select Committee on Cost of Living and thank them for their final report.

The communities of Western Australia are being smashed right now. From the Kimberley to Perth to Esperance, the effects are being felt by all of us. The cost of living is hitting our communities, and it is hitting our communities hard. Not a single element of our lives is not being affected by the rising prices being forced out into the community and causing us to need to consider deep cuts to our lives. It is felt at the checkout when you suddenly experience the jolt in your stomach when you realise that what you previously thought you could budget for to get the food that you need is not longer able to go that far. It is felt at home when the prices of rents and mortgages are skyrocketing with no relief in sight and seemingly little care from this government.

The cost-of-living crisis has grown and grown for years, and this government has sat by and watched. Let's start with groceries, shall we? The average Australian household is spending nearly $10,000 a year at the supermarket check-out. It's putting immense pressure on the day-to-day budgets of families. In 2020, 19 per cent of households expressed that food and groceries were a point of financial stress. As of 2024 that number has doubled to 40 per cent. That is 3.7 million households across this country that are worrying about how they are going to pay for food. The price increases are felt across the board with 31 per cent reporting, according to the data, an increase in oils and fats; a 25 per cent increase in breakfast cereals, bread, cheese, eggs and milk; a 15 per cent jump in the cost of poultry; and a 14 per cent rise in the price of fruit.

This isn't an inevitable outcome of some uncontrollable economic factor. This is largely driven by greedy corporations and by a government unwilling to legislate any safeguards for our community. Coles and Woolworths have an unchallenged duopoly on our access to food and groceries, controlling 67 per cent of the market. These two corporations run some of the highest profit margins for supermarkets in the world and have consistently run higher profits in the last three years as the cost-of-living crisis has spiralled out of control. This is a very real and lived trial and struggle for so many, and there are very real and meaningful actions that the government could take right now to ease the cost-of-living crisis in our community. It could break up this unconscionable duopoly and make supermarket price gouging illegal.

In the housing space, after getting home from being robbed at the check-out, we then get back into our homes only to be robbed again by the corporate landlords and by an RBA that is out of touch and uninterested in the struggles faced by everyday folks in our community. The median rent price across the nation is now $627, a jump of nearly 10 per cent from last year alone. In my home state of Western Australia, vacancy rates are at record lows, which means that, even if you have the money to pay, you will have to go through open houses with 50-plus people, rent bidding, and, whatever conditions the landlord decides on, that's what you get. Additionally, Western Australia has had the sad title of being the only state left in the country with no-fault evictions, meaning that, if you raise a maintenance request or something else that your landlord doesn't like, then there is nothing you can do to prevent yourself being evicted. You are completely at the mercy of your landlord.

There are so many stories across WA of people being pushed out of the market. Those who can rely on parents or friends are doing so, but those who can't are being forced into homelessness. Tonight, 9,000 Western Australians will experience a form of homelessness, 12 per cent of them under the age of 12. It is unacceptable that, in a wealthy country like Australia, so many have to go without access to a basic human right like housing while others hold so much and treat them as commodities and investments. First home buyers are on the front line of this manufactured cost-of-living crisis, with interest rate rises putting them under pressure and making life harder. The Greens are the only party that want to institute both a rent freeze and a cut to the interest rate to help people in this housing crisis.

The impacts of the cost-of-living crisis go beyond housing and groceries and stretch all the way to health care. More and more people are avoiding medical treatment because of costs. In a recent survey I conducted, 80 per cent of people said that they avoided seeing a GP because they couldn't afford it at the time. In Perth, the average out-of-pocket cost to see a GP is nearly $50, and that is assuming that you have the upfront cash in the first place. This is leading many to resort to going to emergency rooms, because now the emergency room is the only fee-free way of receiving healthcare. This applies to dental and mental health care as well, where Medicare doesn't even cover the most basic costs of services, leading many to avoid them altogether. So you rock up to an emergency room because it is the only fee-free place to get health care, and when it comes to your teeth or when it comes to your mind, you cannot even get the help you need there. This simply cannot go on. In an economic crisis, statistics can only go so far, only tell us so much.

The real story is the individual experiences of people in our community, the people we know or even ourselves being affected. It is people making hard choices like putting food on the table or seeing a GP. It is the young family having to move back in with their parents because their landlord forced them out and they cannot afford a new rental in this market. It is the first home buyer who is at risk of losing their house because of these unacceptable and devastating rate rises. It is our friend suffering a mental health crisis but being unable to do anything about it because they can't afford a specialist. These are all issues that government policy could solve tomorrow. These are all issues that this place could act on now. But the government chooses not to and the parliament sits by.

This election will be a cost-of-living election, so I urge people, when they go to vote, to vote for a new government, for a new parliament. I urge people to remember that in this crisis both parties decided to let the suffering continue and to hold them responsible for every single one of the consequences created. Because at the end of the day, MPs are elected by their communities and when they fail to serve those communities they should be replaced. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.