David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, on budget day, it's important to remember that the budget is about priorities. I believe it's time to rethink some of those priorities. Last financial year the federal government spent more on fossil fuel subsidies than on our public schools. This year fossil fuel companies are enjoying record profits as a result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Tonight we will see more fossil fuel subsidies in the budget, subsidies that grow the profits of multinational companies while those Australians on low incomes are left behind. We can no longer subsidise companies making record profits when Australians are facing such huge cost-of-living pressures. Low-income earners, young people and jobseekers are being left to live on $48 a day by the government.

The research is now so clear: telling people to live on $48 a day is telling them to live in poverty; it is forcing them into poverty. In the ACT alone 38,000 people are living in poverty, including 9,000 children. Across the country, one in six children are now growing up in poverty. This is something we should be talking about when we talk about the budget and priorities. It's time to start putting the lives of people and children ahead of the interests of fossil fuel companies. It is time to stop underwriting profits. It's time to tax them their fair share so that we can pay for the services that Australians really need.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight's budget is a test for the new government. They spent the last 4½ months blaming the previous government, even though they inherited a growing economy, record low unemployment that was declining. They've spent a lot of time blaming the previous government but not a lot of time outlining to the Australian people what they are going to do, so tonight's budget is a huge test. It's particularly a test in rural and regional Australia because rural and regional Australia is such an important part of our social fabric and our economy. But there's a great concern, as I travel in rural and regional Australia, that the incoming new government is going to forget them, is going to ignore them; in fact, is going to see them as an easy target.

We have already seen a taste of that with the axing of the Building Better Regions Fund. This fund, as anyone who travelled in rural Australia would know, has funded so many positive projects that smaller councils, smaller regional towns, could not afford to do themselves. These are projects that made a real fundamental difference to people's lives, particularly in the bush where they have cost-of-living pressures that those in the city don't have; although I acknowledge those in the city are facing high petrol prices as well. I was recently up in Tom Price and Onslow, where the cost of diesel, which is still the principal transport fuel in the north of Western Australia, just like it is in regional and rural Australia as a whole, was north of $2.40, north of $2.50. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the 10 days since I left those centres, the price has gone up again, so it is a big test for this government. (Time expired)