Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the additional appropriation bills of 2022-23. These bills, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2022-2023, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2022-2023 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2022-2023, provide for additional funds from consolidated revenue for the remainder of the 2022-23 year. Collectively, the additional appropriation bills of 2022-23 appropriate approximately $6.2 billion from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. The majority, approximately $5.5 billion of this, is to ensure that there is funding to cover upward revisions in demand driven programs or other departmental funding.

The opposition will be supporting the additional appropriation bills. However, this support should not be misconstrued as support for many of the ineffectual or misguided policies of Labor's 2022-23 October budget. In all the recent media about Labor's train wreck 2023-24 budget we may forget the failures of the October budget.

Labor's October budget was indeed a failure. There was no sustainable cost-of-living relief. There was no handbrake on the taxes imposed on Australians. They have entirely abandoned the 23.9 per cent tax to GDP cap, and indeed the only new change to the tax system that was announced in this budget was a new tax on investments, the retiree tax 2.0.

Labor's sneaky new tax will slug people that invest their own savings and superannuation. Despite ruling out these changes amongst many others before the election, Labor will in fact hit retirees and investors with a new $555 million tax, depriving investors of franking credits which they have previously relied upon. They have no plan at all to reduce spending, and we know now that they spent even more in the 2023-24 budget. There is no certainty for the 10 million Australians on their legislated tax relief that's due in 2024. We still don't have an unequivocal statement from the Treasurer that Australians will receive the stage 3 tax cuts—just weasel words—the stage 3 tax cuts that so many Australians are relying on.

Since the October budget, the RBA has increased the cash rate six times just between budgets, pausing only to see if the government's 2023-24 budget would deliver any assistance at all. As we know, none came.

Senator McGrath presently noted in his response to the October budget in this chamber:

This government's reckless spending is forcing the RBA to ratchet up interest rates, and mortgagees are feeling it. Rate rises every month since this government has come to power, with each one making it harder for Australians to pay their mortgage, buy groceries, pay their bills, all thanks to this Labor government.

He went on to say, in his typically eloquent Senator McGrath manner, when taken as a whole, this budget fails a test:

… indeed, it even fails Labor's own test set by them. This budget breaks many of the promises the government made before the election. It lets Australia down. Australians were promised cost-of-living relief but, just in time for Christmas, they see this government has no plan to help them.

If only the government had listened to the wise words of Senator McGrath. Instead, we saw the same old approach in May and, predictably, the same result. Australians didn't get cost relief for Christmas. They got more rate rises, they got higher grocery prices and they got higher energy bills.

We know that Australians got no cost-of-living relief in the October budget simply by looking at the government's own actions. Cost-of-living pressures reached crisis levels by the time of the October budget, but the government failed to deliver any cost-of-living relief or policy to combat inflation. This is Labor's cost-of-living crisis, and it is doing nothing to help ordinary Australians. This was so obviously a failure of government that the government recalled parliament in December to ram through a ham-fisted intervention in the energy market. It did so because there was an urgency to cost-of-living relief. There was an urgency to high energy bills.

Perhaps the only thing in the October budget that we can trust is that prediction, that forecast, that energy prices will continue to skyrocket. We can trust that there will certainly be no reduction in energy bills by $275, despite the comments from the Prime Minister prior to the election. More than 90 times he promised to $275 reduction in energy bills because of the policies of this government. Well, by October they had failed. By may they had failed again. One year on and the government has broken this among many promises.

We found so soon after the October budget was delivered that it was, in fact, full of holes and fake savings—like their saving on consultants, on travel, on legal expenses and on advertising. In the most recent budget we saw that Labor gave themselves an extra year to achieve that saving that they banked back in October, and then we found out that the savings didn't even really need to be spent on consultants or travel or legal expenses or advertising. They were just suggestions: 'You can find those savings anywhere you like, but this is where we'd like you to find the savings. We've banked them, certainly, but just find them where you can.' This was simply an efficiency dividend by stealth.

Labor's biggest spend in the October budget was, in fact, the canary in the coalmine for the big spending that would come in Labor's May budget. Back in the October budget the government announced $115 billion of new spending—new spending, not belt-tightening. Not to be outdone by past efforts, the Treasurer and the finance minister managed to deliver a budget last month that included $185 billion of extra spending while, at the same time, managing to cut productivity enhancing infrastructure—new spending and productivity enhancing infrastructure cut. This new spending has unquestionably added to inflationary pressures in an already high inflationary environment, making the cost-of-living crisis that Australians are experiencing under Labor even worse. It means that inflation stays higher for longer. It means that interest rates will therefore have to stay higher for longer. This is a cost-of-living crisis of Labor's making.

This isn't simply the view of the opposition. It's the view of independent economists. Chris Richardson, for instance, said it very clearly. He said:

I had thought that the Reserve Bank was done and dusted but this—

the budget—

has notably raised the chance that they will do another swing of the baseball bat …

I'm sure Australians are thrilled to hear that the baseball bat is being taken out for them. BetaShares economist David Bassanese said that Labor's budget was 'unambiguously expansionary'. And all this is at a time when the Reserve Bank is trying to contract the economy. It has a contractionary monetary policy. The fiscal policy of this government is unambiguously expansionary. Experts from EY, from PinPoint Macro Analytics, from UBS and from HSBC have all lined up to call out this government's budget, which will do nothing to address inflation, meaning that inflation will be higher for longer, thanks to the decisions that have been taken—actively taken—by this government.

So how are they trying to pay for all this new spending? Two new taxes on regional Australia will add to those inflationary pressures and increase the price of groceries. There's a new food and fibre tax on farmers, in the form of a 10 per cent increase on agricultural levies. How can this possibly be fair? There's a biosecurity levy on those that are paying the price of biosecurity threats, rather than on those that are importing the biosecurity threats. How can this possibly be fair? It's known that this government, by imposing this levy on farmers, is simply going to see the cost directly passed on to consumers at the grocery check-out. Everything you buy that comes from a farm will be more expensive because of decisions the Labor government has made. But wait, there's more—because there's also a tax on truckies, with a 5.2c per litre increase in the heavy-vehicle road user charge. So, while your more expensive lettuces are on the way to the grocery store, they're going to be taxed again—twice—and you will end up paying for that.

Average, ordinary Australians will end up paying the price for the decisions that this government has made—decisions to spend more and tax more. And why are they doing that? Because it's in Labor's DNA. This is who they are. They spend more; they tax more. They talk about fiscal responsibility, they talk about good economic management, but that's prior to an election. Once they get into government, history repeats itself. All of a sudden, it's deja vu all over again: high tax, high spend and Australians pay the price.

This is just a snapshot of the failures of this Labor government on managing the economy and managing the budget. Philip Lowe has called them out. He has said that there are risks to the economy and that it is a 'narrow path' that he is treading. The reason why he's treading that narrow path is that he is doing all the heavy lifting to manage the economy, because Labor has essentially raised the white flag. Even though, back in the October budget, Jim Chalmers looked Australians in the eye and said that inflation was public enemy No. 1 and that inflation was the dragon that we needed to slay, everything he has done has been entirely different to everything he has said. Because he's waved the white flag on inflation, the RBA has been left to do all the heavy lifting. That is their job; their job is to manage inflation. They've been given no help from the government, so of course they're forced to lift interest rates, the one and only tool that they have in the shed. Of course they're forced to continue to impose interest rate rises on mortgage holders in Australia.

At the same time, Jim Chalmers has the audacious hypocrisy to then turn to Philip Lowe, the RBA Governor, and say he needs to explain his actions. I don't think so. Indeed, it's Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese that need to explain their actions and to explain to the Australian people why they promised cost-of-living relief and yet delivered so little; why they promised that it would be cheaper to pay their mortgages, and yet their mortgages have done nothing but go up. In fact, for a family that has a $750,000 mortgage, mortgage repayments have gone up to $22,000 a year. That's not the sort of money you find down the back of the couch. Where's the average family supposed to find that sort of money?

This is what the decisions of this government have made. These are the implications for ordinary Australians. Prior to the election, the government said they were going to reduce your energy bills. They have failed. They have failed to reduce energy bills because they have put ideology over the cost-of-living crisis that is facing ordinary Australians and ahead of the essential services they need. That's why you are paying higher electricity prices. You are paying higher grocery prices because of the taxes the government are imposing on farmers and truckies.

The opposition will support these additional appropriation bills, but understand that this government is making your life harder. The decisions that it's taking are making your life more difficult. Is there an Australian out there today that says they are feeling better off than they were just 12 months ago? If you can find me that Australian, that would be fantastic. Perhaps they could submit to the cost-of-living committee, because all the evidence that we hear as we travel around Australia is that Australians are doing it tough and that this government is not stepping up to help them. Indeed, it is potentially making a bad situation worse. We will support these additional appropriation bills, but we will also continue to hold the government to account over the budget decisions that it has made, the reckless spending that it continues to make and the increased taxes that it continues to impose on unsuspecting Australians who didn't vote for this. They didn't vote for this. They voted for one thing and got another. But, then again, that's Labor. That's in Labor's DNA—high taxes, high spending and broken promises.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens will be supporting these bills, the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2022-2023, the Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2022-2023 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2022-2023. This was a budget brought down in the face of massive challenges at a personal level, a local level, a community level, a state and territory level, a national level and a global level. This was a budget brought down while our climate is breaking down around us. This was a budget brought down while biodiversity is crumbling away as we speak. This was a budget brought down when Australia is facing massive wealth inequality, where the rich are getting richer and millions of Australians are being ground into poverty. This was a budget brought down when renters and mortgage holders are getting smashed, with 12 interest rate rises in 13 months—something we have never seen before in Australia's history. They are getting smashed by those interest rate rises which are owned by the government because the government is refusing to pull the fiscal levers at its disposal to help deal with the spike in inflation. This is a budget that is being brought down as an entire generation of Australians are being priced out of the great Australian dream of owning their own home. It is a budget being brought down while the millions of Australians who are renters are facing double-digit rent increases every year, where the power lies with the landlords, not the renters, and too many of those renters are faced with extreme rental stress and the danger of becoming homeless or having to couch surf because they can't afford to pay the rent.

That is the scenario that nearly half a century of neoliberalism has created in this country. That is the context in which this budget has been brought down. So how did Labor respond to these great challenges? They brought down a budget that has over $40 billion out of the public purse to directly subsidise the burning of fossil fuels. I will tell you now that, when history is written about this time and people look back and say, 'In 2023, a government that liked to pretend it was progressive and liked to cosplay as a progressive government spent $40 billion in a budget to directly subsidise the burning of fossil fuels,' that will go down as a massive historical black mark not just against the Labor Party but against our country as a whole. While entire Pacific island nations are in the process of disappearing, literally, off the global maps thanks to sea-level rise, while we are seeing record ice loss in Antarctica as we have this debate today, while sea temperatures in the North Atlantic are spiking out of control and while we are seeing all around the planet unprecedented climate disruption and biodiversity loss, here is a government that still supports logging native forests and has over $40 billion in its budget to directly subsidise fossil fuels. In the face of massive wealth inequality, it's a government that has brought down a budget that bakes in a $24.85-a-day tax cut—a tax cut of nearly 25 bucks a day—to everyone who sits in this place and to the billionaires in this country, and that thinks it can buy off people on JobSeeker with a $2.85-a-day pay rise, leaving them to be ground ever further into poverty.

We've had confirmation today of what we've seen over many decades in this country—that wage restraint is only for working people in Australia, and doesn't apply to the bosses and doesn't apply to company directors. The ABC is reporting today that CEO pay in Australia is rising at 15 per cent—15 per cent, folks—on average. If you're a CEO—nice work if you can get it—that's a 19 per cent pay rise amongst the ASX 200. It is a 15 per cent pay rise on average for the CEOs but a 19 per cent pay rise if you are the CEO of an ASX 200 corporation—the big corporations—in this country. This is an entire business class, and all we hear from them is just a constant drone—or whine, if you will—about declining productivity.

Let me ask this question: if productivity growth is so bad, why do CEOs deserve a 20 per cent pay rise? Answer me that one, colleagues. I'll answer it for you here, because we know why: it's all about the profit. We've seen that with PricewaterhouseCoopers and the terrific job that Senator Barbara Pocock has been doing exposing that particular mess, that particular scam, that particular conspiracy from PricewaterhouseCoopers to monetise confidential Treasury information. It's all about the profit—parasitic corporate giants, many of them with monopoly powers, using the cover of supply shocks to jack up their prices and make more profits and fuel more inflation along the way, which the RBA then responds to by putting up interest rates and smashing mortgage holders and renters for a problem they didn't cause.

We had confirmation from the OECD last week that, in Australia, profit is responsible for more than half of domestic inflation. The Greens totally accept there are global supply side issues that are driving inflation. But what we know from the OECD—

That renowned organisation with that radical leftist at their head, Senator Brockman, who you know far better than me—with that radical leftist, former senator Cormann, in charge! We've had confirmation today that this profit is being used to jack up CEO pay. That's what is happening here, colleagues. It needs to be spelled out. It needs to be placed on the table.

I want to say this: we hear a lot about the dangers of a so-called wage price spiral. I also want to be clear that, if there was genuinely a wage price spiral happening in Australia, that would actually justify action in the monetary policy space—absolutely no question about that. But we heard from the Treasury secretary, Dr Kennedy, in estimates, that there is no sign of a wage price spiral in Australia. I say this to you, colleagues: the only place in Australia where there is any sign at all of a wage price spiral is in places like Toorak and Double Bay. There is a good wage price spiral going on over there, colleagues, because that's where the CEOs live, in their multimillion-dollar mansions.

So what is the Labor Party going to do about all the CEOs of the ASX 200 companies getting a 19 per cent pay rise off the back of rank profiteering and price gouging by corporations? What's the Labor Party going to do to them? It's going to give them a great, fat tax cut. That's right; that's what the modern Labor Party is all about—a $9,000-a-year tax break for struggling CEOs dealing with a mere 19 per cent annual pay rise. Then Labor's going to back in the RBA putting 130,000 more Australians out of work, because those are the figures that this budget was predicated on. That will mean the CEOs can reap even bigger profits by driving real wages backwards even faster than they are currently going backwards.

That is the sum of the wit of the current Labor government: take a policy that Mr Scott Morrison came up with as Treasurer, take the policy that Mr Morrison then super-sized as Prime Minister, and make it your own—the stage 3 tax cuts. Make sure all those struggling CEOs out there can get even richer and buy more investment properties and make sure all the people who are not so rich stay not so rich. Then put another 130,000 of the not-so-rich people out of work so the workers don't get too uppity and start thinking maybe they should get their share. Well, fantastic—great move! Well done, Labor!

What we are seeing in this country is nothing less than an upward transfer of wealth. This is reverse wealth redistribution. It's the enrichment of the wealthy at the expense of the poor. People are working longer hours for less money while their bosses are giving themselves pay rises at more than twice the rate of inflation. Let's think about that for a minute, colleagues. While real rages are plunging downwards, the bosses get a pay rise more than double the inflation rate.

People are feeling ripped off in this country for one very good reason: they are being ripped off in this country. That is what is going on. Young people in particular are being absolutely smashed. They're told a complete lie about their future, and it is a lie that used to be the truth, used to be part of the social contract in this country. But it's a lie today, because young people are being told: study hard, work hard, save for a house, like your parents did, and you can have a good life. That's what they are told, and it was true, decades ago. Well, that bright future, that nice life, is being robbed from them by the corporate classes of Australia, facilitated by the major parties in this place.

That uni degree is going to cost them tens of thousands of dollars, and that debt is indexed every year, meaning that many will never pay it off and will carry the weight of that debt around their necks for the rest of their lives—that indexation and that debt created by a generation of politicians who had access to free university. That house that young people are told they should save for is completely unaffordable now, unless Mummy and Daddy can help them out by loaning them the money or gifting them a house. If they were lucky enough to sneak into the market over the last few years—maybe they believed what Dr Lowe told them when he said interest rates wouldn't go up until 2024 at the earliest—the RBA is smashing them with interest rate rise after interest rates rise, sending them to the wall and in many cases turning them inside out, where their mortgage is now larger than the value of their property. And if they're renting they are being smashed to pieces by the same wealthy generation of landlords.

And who's done all this to those millions of Australian young people and those millions of Australians being ground into poverty? It is the people in this room right now who are listening to this speech, the people who do the bidding of corporations—because, let's face it, they want to sit on the boards of these corporations in the future. They're doing the bidding of landlords because they've completely given up on education, hard work and decent jobs as a pathway to a better life in Australia. According to the Labor and Liberal parties, if you don't own multiple houses then you are not worth the time of day. And, as far as they are concerned, it's tough luck if you can't afford the rent. This budget gives nearly $17 billion in direct handouts to wealthy property moguls and contains no money—no money at all—for direct investment into new social and affordable housing. There is nothing for renters, no direct investment into social and affordable housing or public housing, and $16.8 billion for wealthy property speculators.

This is a budget and, ultimately, this is a parliament that is just saying to people who are being marginalised and ground into poverty: 'Tough luck. Tough luck about your HECS debt. You should've gone to uni in the seventies and eighties when people in this place had the opportunity to go to uni and get a free university degree.' This budget says to people: 'Tough luck if you can't make ends meet. Tough luck if they ignore you. Tough luck if you want to hand over a sustainable climate and a functioning ecosystem to your children and your grandchildren so that they can have access to the same opportunities that we all had. Tough luck to you, because we're going to keep publicly subsidising burning fossil fuels.'

I'll tell you what: poor people in this country, young people in this country, people who believe in a functioning climate and a functioning ecosystem on this planet that ultimately supports everyone's life, we are fuming right now, and rightly so. Those people—and I am one of them—have every right to be angry, because we are collectively victims of daylight robbery by the people that we collectively elected to represent us. This is a Labor government. If only we had a progressive government in this country, rather than a government and a Prime Minister that daily are earning the reputation of being timid.

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

I rise to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2022-2023 and cognate bills. I will start by correcting the record. I agree with some of what Senator McKim had to say in criticising this budget, and I'll go on to say why I think this is an absolutely failed budget in a moment. But I do need to correct the record on the OECD report. This is not going to come as a blinding shock to anyone in the chamber, but the Australia Institute's interpretation of the OECD report and the Greens' interpretation of the OECD report is not entirely accurate. It's not an entirely accurate summation of what the OECD said, so I think it is worthwhile putting on the record what the OECD said.

It said that market power of businesses may be increasing price mark-ups; it said that's a possibility. It also noted that it could be firms anticipating future cost increases rather than an increase to monopoly power. So, firms are responding to the inflationary pressures that they see coming down the pipeline at them because they are talking to their suppliers. They know their suppliers are about to increase their prices, because that's what inflation does, Senator McKim, through the economy. The OECD report said:

A key policy issue is whether the observed aggregate increase in unit profits reflects a generalised lack of competitive pressures throughout the economy, or specific factors that have contributed to strong profit growth in a few sectors or in a subset of firms.

Let's take that apart a little bit because it is very important.

We've seen very high commodity prices, particularly in a couple of commodities that very much drive certain parts of the Australian economy. We've seen it in my home state of Western Australia, the home state of Senator O'Sullivan as well, in particular where we've seen very high iron ore prices, but we've also seen very high coal prices which have just delivered to Queensland a budget surplus of $13 billion—the highest budget surplus of any state in Australia's history, driven by commodity prices in the coal sector. So, we've got a unique set of economic circumstances, where a small subset of the Australia economy is doing extremely well on the back of high international commodity prices, but many businesses out there are just doing it tough. People, on this side of the chamber anyway, talk to those businesses every day. We know how tough those medium and small business sectors of our economy in particular are doing it in this inflationary environment. The idea that corporate profits are somehow the problem and that somehow limiting or capping those would solve the inflationary issue is an absolute nonsense. It's 'voodoo economics', to quote a previous Treasurer.

We see, at the moment, that we have a serious problem with inflation—one that the government is failing to tackle. They are leaving all the work to the Reserve Bank. They are leaving all the heavy lifting in the economy, in terms of getting under control those inflationary pressures that are having a devastating impact on families. That's where I'll agree with Senator McKim: it's absolutely having a devastating impact on renters, on people who own their homes and have a mortgage and on families that aren't even in those circumstances, because of the cost increases everywhere else in the economy and the pressure that puts on family incomes.

What did we see in Labor's second budget, after a year in office? We saw an absolute failure to recognise and confront those inflationary challenges. In fact, in their budget they increased spending, which must have inflationary effects. Inflation is and always will be a monetary issue. Increasing the amount of spending in the economy will flow on to inflation. Until we recognise and address that fact, we will see more pain coming. The Reserve Bank were clearly left with very little option, because they raised interest rates again, following the federal budget. They saw that there was nothing in the budget that was putting downward pressure on inflation, and so they were forced to move again, to raise interest rates again, which obviously then flows through the rest of the economy.

Senator McKim says that there's no wage price spiral, and I agree that the evidence is probably mixed on that at the moment, but it's certainly a risk. Everyone must see that it is a risk. When you have unions making ambit claims for 30 per cent pay rises, you must see that a wage price spiral is a risk for this country. Philip Lowe, the head of the Reserve Bank, has spoken a number of times of the risky intersection of wage increases and inflation. This is not some grand conspiracy from this side of the chamber. This is something that we've seen in economies repeatedly before. We've seen the preconditions set up for wage price spirals that are extraordinarily damaging. I am old enough to remember the wage price spirals in the seventies and early eighties, and they were extraordinarily destructive to the economy and put extreme pressure on families and small businesses.

What are a few things in the budget that I think are particularly destructive? One thing, I think, that perhaps has been overlooked is the damage to the investment climate for industries that we need to survive, thrive and actually expand. One is the gas sector. We need a vibrant, effective gas sector in this country. Instead, the Labor government say they support gas—sort of—but then they also talk it down and agree with the Greens on restricting potential pathways for investment in that industry. The Labor government also put in place things like price caps—an extraordinary ministerial power to control the industry domestically—and requisitioned gas for the domestic market, which sent shockwaves through our trading partners and horrified those who have invested significantly in Australia and in the Australian gas industry over the last 40 years.

A company, INPEX, has invested significantly—billions of dollars—into the development of projects in Australia. I think you would all agree, as I've said before in this place, that the Japanese, when dealing on the international stage, are usually fairly restrained in their language. The chairman of INPEX came to this country—in fact, he came into this building—and gave a speech about Labor's policy in the area, where he said:

Certainty in policy direction and a stable regulatory framework will continue to encourage strong investment in Australia.

Unfortunately, the investment climate in Australia appears to be deteriorating.

In Japan we say, "Don't cheat at rock, paper, scissors." This translates to "Don't move the goal posts after the game has started!"

You have the chairman of a major investor in Australia saying that this Labor government is cheating at rock paper scissors. That is an extraordinary thing for a major investor in Australia to say, whilst at the same time saying that the investment climate in Australia appears to be deteriorating. He went on to say:

The energy policy environment in Australia today appears to be driven almost by ideology and domestic concerns.

It is 'driven by ideology', he said. He continued:

Australia is competing for global investment and the changes we are seeing to Australian policy settings will choke investment and strangle the expansion of LNG projects in this country.

This is a set of policies which are designed to detract from Australia's economic wellbeing, Australia's overall productivity, its ability to compete on the international stage and its ability to attract investment dollars from overseas. That is something that I believe all Australians should be extraordinarily concerned about.

Another area in the trade space where we see this negative impact is in the, quite frankly, completely evidence-free decision to ban the live sheep trade from my home state of Western Australia. This is a small part of the economic pie; I fully admit that. It affects around 3½ thousand farming families in my home state of Western Australia. It doesn't have broad impacts outside WA—it does have some flow-on impacts, but they are not broad; I accept that—but it will have a devastating impact on WA.

We saw in the latest Rabobank survey of, effectively, business confidence and farmer confidence that, generally, farming confidence in Australia is on the way up. People have had a couple of good seasons, generally speaking. Those on the east coast who have been through some tough times are seeing, perhaps, a bit of a recovery over here as people rebuild herds and flocks as they see the potential for a good season into the future. In Western Australia, the complete opposite has occurred. Under this government, farm business confidence in Western Australia has plummeted. It's gone into negative territory. This is extraordinary, especially when you consider that that is coming on the back of two record grain harvests in WA. We have been through the best of times in Western Australia in terms of grain production and yet business confidence among farmers has gone backwards. That's because this government is putting in place a policy that is a direct attack on farming wellbeing. It's not just these 3½ thousand farmers affected by the ban on live exports. That's the point in Western Australia. It will have flow-on effects to everybody involved in the sheep industry, but it will also have flow-on effects to everyone involved in the southern cattle industry because a lot of the live export boats that leave Fremantle are dual-purpose boats. They have both sheep and cattle aboard. With the economics of the sheep trade no longer present it will no longer be viable to ship cattle, either, on those dual-purpose boats. So we have the flow-on impacts to the southern cattle trade. Obviously, we also have flow-on impacts to vets, to transport companies, to the tyre providers who support those transport companies and to the shippers. We also have flow-on impacts to our trading partners in the Middle East—people who have been trading with us in these commodities for decades. They rely on this source of protein and they are also good purchasers of many other commodities that we produce, such as our grain.

The idea that these decisions, both in the gas industry and in the sheep industry, won't have flow-on consequences to the general trading environment in which Australia operates is a nonsense. They will have flow-on consequences. They will have negative flow-on consequences. They will make it harder for Australia to do business in the world. They will make it harder for Australia to attract the investment dollars we need. They will make it harder to see development of new onshore gas in the eastern states, which the eastern states desperately need if they're not going to see energy crises over the next years. We've already seen the flow-on impacts of this Labor government's suite of policies on energy prices. They claimed, coming into government, that they were going to put downward pressure on energy prices, when all we've seen is upward pressure on energy prices.

I think the market offers in Victoria were something like a 30 per cent increase in electricity prices over the next 12 months—a 30 per cent increase. That's energy prices doubling every three years. Householders need to think about that, as they also see their mortgage interest payments rising at the fastest rate in Australia's history, and they also see the cost of the general basket of groceries they buy in the supermarket increasing at an extraordinary rate. The underlying rate of inflation is the most significant economic challenge this country faces, and Labor's budget did absolutely nothing to do anything about it.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, Jim Chalmers handed down his second budget, and I want to talk about a few things that are in it and the things that should be in it but aren't. It turns out our budget cartoon was prophetic. The Treasurer needs to find a new career as a comedian. First, lets talk about the surplus. It's the first surplus delivered in many years, but only because Labor included the interest from the Future Fund for the first time. Otherwise, it would have been a deficit budget. Don't forget that Labor had an unexpected $50 billion windfall from the previous government in the form of royalties. It's a very small surplus—$4 billion—and we will return to deficits in the next budget. Across the forward estimates—the next four years—these deficits will add another $110 billion to federal government debt. Within three years our gross debt will top a trillion dollars for the first time and our interest on this debt will be almost $30 billion a year. That's $60 million a day, or $700 per second. That's $30 billion going to central banks and other creditors. Not a single cent of it will go towards a road, a hospital or a school or even towards reducing the cost of living. It's about 75 per cent of Australia's entire defence budget.

Our debt keeps piling up, and this budget is just the most recent opportunity blown by a federal government to undertake urgently needed structural tax reform. Labor has a worse record on debt than the coalition—but not by much. Labor is responsible for $250 billion of debt that the coalition took on when it was elected in 2013. So Labor, stop blaming the coalition for the debt we're in today. You're partly responsible for some of it. However, neither of these parties can bring themselves to really turn things around, deliver consistent surpluses and pay down our huge debt.

There was a lot of pressure on the government to provide some relief to Australians who are struggling with the rising costs of living, and it's fair to say that the government has responded. There's a rise in unemployment benefits, rent assistance and the single parenting payment, and a bigger investment in Medicare. I'm not going to oppose most of these measures for families who are doing it tough. However, I completely reject the single parenting payment increase at a cost of almost $2 billion. It was Julia Gillard, Labor's PM—a woman, mind you—who about 11 years ago reduced to eight years the age of the child when the payment would cease, in an effort to get more parents back into the workforce. Now Anthony Albanese is reliving his childhood, wishing for his mother to be able to be at home for him, and he wants the taxpayers to fund it. Well and good, but it shouldn't be at the cost of our increasing debt, and it begs the question: don't the kids of working mums and dads deserve the same consideration? Albanese was the child, but I wore his mother's shoes as a single mother with three children. Support should be a helping hand, not a way of life. I expect many people may try to abuse the single parenting payment by having more kids just so they don't have to work. This is what happened with Peter Costello's baby bonus.

It's also worth noting here that, with the government slashing more than $20 billion on various relief measures, it will very likely drive inflation rather than cool things down. So don't expect the cost of living to stop rising. Don't expect the cost of electricity or gas to just drop. It will keep going up as Labor and the Greens remove all our reliable generation and replace it with costly, unreliable renewables.

The facts are irrefutable. Since the introduction of renewables, our electricity has become among the most expensive in the world. Climate change has nothing to do with it—only greedy corporations and incompetent governments fearmongering purely for votes and pushing an insidious agenda of international control. We can only stop this by moving to nuclear power. And, as these costs continue to rise, the Reserve Bank's only real mechanism to stop it is to keep raising interest rates.

A home is the biggest investment the vast majority of us will make and, as we've seen during this crisis, there are many families who have been forced to sell their homes because they can't absorb the huge interest increases in their mortgage payments. The great Australian dream of owning a home is getting further out of reach. What we should be doing is implementing policies that help make it more achievable for more people.

First things first—let's stop allowing foreigners to own residential property. Australians can't own property in many countries whose citizens are allowed to own Australian property. That's just not right. Banning foreign ownership, like Canada and New Zealand have done, will increase the supply of homes for Australians to buy. The thousands of foreign owned homes sitting empty should be made to be sold in a 12-month period.

The next step is to lower immigration, which will reduce demand for housing. Since Labor took government, they've been bringing in 7,000 people a week and will continue to do so for the next two years and maybe more. Labor is making our housing and rental prices a great deal worse by letting so many people into Australia, and their worthless housing future fund will do virtually nothing that makes a difference to this crisis.

One Nation proposes another measure to alleviate this crisis: allowing homeowners to rent rooms in their homes to tenants tax free. Having people under a roof is much better than having them living in tents, caravans or cars. This would also provide some additional income to homeowners so they can better manage rising mortgage payments and cost-of-living increases.

Now let's turn to the Voice referendum. Our last referendum was in 1999, and it cost the taxpayer about $67 million. That's approximately $124 million in today's money. The Prime Minister is blowing more than $400 million of our money for this referendum. This makes absolutely no sense unless he's banking a lot of this cash to fund the Voice to Parliament. I suspect Labor will attempt to legislate the Voice to Parliament regardless of the referendum result. Labor doesn't give a damn about what the Australian people think, and the Prime Minister has nailed his political skin to a successful 'yes' vote. If we reject the Voice at the referendum, and the polls have shown we are more and more likely to do that, Anthony Albanese will try to push his personal vanity project through parliament anyway.

Now let's talk about infrastructure. Labor has scrapped another dam project in Queensland. Labor and the Greens really hate dams for some ridiculous reason or another. One Nation, on the other hand, strongly supports the Hughenden Irrigation Project scrapped in this budget, as we supported the Hells Gates Dam project Labor scrapped in last year's budget. In this land of droughts and flooding rains, we need more dams and water security. They create wealth, using water that would otherwise flow uselessly to the sea. They can generate energy. They can help manage droughts and floods. They most definitely improve water and food security and drive growth in our world-leading agricultural industries—more farms, more food and fibre, and more jobs.

Farmers are also screaming out for the road and rail infrastructure which supports their supply chains to be repaired, maintained and upgraded. A lot of road and rail infrastructure was damaged in floods last year and urgently needs repairing. Instead of giving billionaire Twiggy Forrest $2 billion, as Labor has done in this budget, to kickstart a green hydrogen industry, which has never been successful anywhere in the world, I would have directed this money towards this much more urgent repair effort. Let Mr Forrest fund his own pet project that could see him reap billions more if successful. I can assure you it won't be taxpayers who see any profits.

What is absolutely no surprise in this budget is the obscene amount of money thrown at the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Its funding has been doubled from $7 billion to $14 billion—what a criminal waste of taxpayers' money on things like green hydrogen pipedreams and yet more useless bureaucracy in the form of a net zero transition authority. Last year I showed that the Labor government can't even explain what net zero actually means. But that hasn't stopped them from creating this new bureaucracy to worship with them in the cult of climate change. Enough is enough. It's renewables which have directly led to a 300 per cent rise in our energy bills over the past 20 years, but Chris Bowen does not give a damn about household energy costs. He's aiming for 82 per cent of Australian energy production from renewables by 2030, more than triple what we have now, severely risking our energy security and piling another 300 per cent increase on Australian household and business energy costs. Along with that, we will lose a lot of our industries and manufacturing.

Also, how's this for a budget measure? Labor has stated it's provided indemnity for specialised external advisers who advised the government during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it hasn't revealed the cost. That's right; Labor is protecting the so-called experts whose advice led to the lockdowns and mandates that destroyed jobs, businesses and families across Australia, while our governments put us into hundreds of billions of dollars of more debt. This begs an obvious question: Why do they need protection? Could it be that, while our governments were all patting themselves on the back for their pandemic response in front of the cameras, behind the scenes there were serious legal concerns about the individual rights they were violating and the potential dangers of untested vaccines? Only a royal commission has a chance of getting at the truth, and it's past time the Prime Minister pulled his finger out and followed through on this commitment. I won't stop fighting for a royal commission into the pandemic—if it really was a pandemic.

This budget has been just the latest of many missed opportunities for urgent structural tax reform. Labor spent the weeks leading up to the budget talking about the need for more revenue, and they were actually right about that. There have been huge cost blowouts in the NDIS, with another $21 billion over the next four years, reaching $56 billion a year. I'm hearing constantly from people about how the NDIS is a bottomless pit full of fraud and overservicing, with no accountability and thousands of people on the scheme who shouldn't be. What has the minister done? Absolutely nothing—let's just throw another $21 billion at it!

We have a massive commitment to the new AUKUS alliance. Those nuclear subs are not going to be cheap, but I support them. The money for all this cost-of-living relief has to come from somewhere too. There's a ready source of this additional revenue, but it's not the long-suffering Australian taxpayers. It's the mostly foreign owned multinational resource companies exploiting our world-leading natural resources while paying virtually no tax in Australia for this privilege. For the past six years, I've been calling for reform of the petroleum resource rent tax to make this happen, and, believe it or not, there's actually been a little bit of movement in this budget. The government has introduced a change to the PRRT which effectively mean that companies exploiting our offshore natural gas will pay more tax sooner. So, thankfully, my meeting with the Prime Minister to raise this didn't fall on deaf ears and he took advice from what I told him. The change would limit the proportion of these companies' income which then can by offset by deductions to 90 per cent. It's not a lot of additional revenue—just $2.4 billion over the next four years—but it's a damn good start.

With the reforms One Nation is talking about, we could improve Australia's bottom line by at least $25 billion in a year. We still have a long way to, but I will never stop fighting for the Australian people to get a fair return for our resources. I call on this Labor government to do this. I don't believe they really understand—neither does Chris Bowen with regard to climate change and pushing on that—how people are doing it tough because of the cost of their electricity bills. We've seen the closure of a lot of industries in Australia, and we're going to see a lot more that will close due to the rising cost of electricity. Giving out $500 rebates in your budget, a few hundred dollars here and there, won't stop the cost-of-living increases. People are doing it tough. They're going to lose their homes. That's all because of government policy that happens in this place.

I say to the government: you think that you're safe in your seats and that you've got your income. You've lost touch with grassroots people and how much they are really struggling, even when buying groceries. I see it. I've never lost touch with my grassroots, and I never will. That's why I'll keep fighting for the Australian people.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the Australian people are being reminded that they really need to look at what Labor do when they're in government, not what they say when they're trying to get into government. I thought it was pertinent that we perhaps look today at a number of statements that were made in the lead up to the election. Mr Albanese and his team promised that cost-of-living pressures would improve under Labor. One of these statements was: 'I'll say this very clearly: they'—everyday Australians—'will be better off under a Labor government.' I would challenge you to find an Australian who will tell you they are better off now when it comes to the cost of living than they were in May 2022. Good luck finding one. Good luck finding anyone out there that is better off today than in May 2022. Just come and let us know.

They said: 'We've got policies about getting power bills down. We've got policies to get real wages moving again.' I think we all know, as Senator Hanson just pointed out, that is not really the case. They said, 'People will be seeing in their bank accounts what the change of government means.' Well, finally, they actually told the truth about something! All Australians are actually seeing a significant change in their bank accounts since the change of government, but I'm not 100 per cent sure they understood what that meant. I think Australians, when they went to polls, thought: 'A change in my bank account, which they're so proudly spruiking, will be a positive change. It will be a positive change in my bank account. My mortgage is going to be affordable. My grocery bill is going to go down. My energy bill is going to go down.' This is not the case. We now have everyday Australians fighting to maintain a roof over their heads and making choices over what they can spend their money on. That's because petrol prices are up, grocery prices are up and energy bills are up.

Tax bills are about to go up. For all those Australians that rely on their tax return each year, that $1,500 that mid- and low-income earners receive is gone. Ten million Australians will be $1,500 worse off with their tax returns this year. So we know that everyday Australians have seen a change in their bank accounts but not in the way that this Labor government promised it was going to happen.

Those of us that have been around for a while, those of us tipping on the side of 45 plus, all remember 'the recession we had to have'. We all remember when unemployment was superhigh. We all remember when interest rates were through the roof. We all remember how difficult times were in 'the recession we had to have'.

What is absolutely astounding from the government is that they seem to have no realisation about how tough everyday Australians are doing it. It actually begs the question, even though we in here are all on very good wages: how many of their senators are feeling the pinch? My mortgage, I can tell you, has doubled since August last year. That makes a difference. I have three children. I'm paying their school fees, paying the grocery bills and paying for their clothes. That all becomes increasingly difficult, even on good wages. So it would be interesting to see if any honesty would be forthcoming, which we know is a big call—a big call; honesty's not really their strong suit—if any of them were brave enough to say, 'You know what? My mortgage has gone up, my rent has gone up, to the point that it is having a significant impact on my household budget,' because we know Australians across the board are feeling this pain.

A family of four, since this government has come to power, since its October budget, has been expected to find an extra $22,000. That's how much everything has increased—$22,000. If you are someone who has an annual income that doesn't have a whole big bonus that comes at the end of that and doesn't have the capability for you to go to your boss and negotiate a wage rise, where do you get that $22,000? Some people won't be able to find it. Some people won't be able to find that $22,000. So they and their children are going to miss out. They're going to miss out. That could be missing out on what food goes on the table. That could be missing out on staying in their home. They might have to sell their house. They might have to move from where they're renting to somewhere else. That could mean the kids don't get to stay in the same school—because they have to move.

It also means that some people that are small-business owners—and we know those sitting on the government benches don't like small business; they do everything they can to push small business out of business. We are not a hundred per cent sure that there is anyone in the government, in either chamber, who has actually ever owned and run a small business, because they've got no experience or care or consideration—

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, gosh, just listen to yourself!

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What was your small business, Senator Pratt? I note your interjection. Give us an update. I'd love to hear all the small-business experience coming from those on the other side of this chamber and in the House, because it's very difficult to establish, unlike on this side of the house, where almost every member at some point in time has run a small business. Ours was in agriculture, and I can tell you that was good fun—superfun! Not only do you have government policy doing awful things to your business but you're actually out there praying, 'Please rain,' and then, at a different time of year, 'Please stop raining.' Yes, that's a superfun business! Not being in agriculture anymore—and I feel for the farmers every harvest—I've got to say as the ex-wife of a contractor I don't miss it. I don't miss it and I get a bit of PTSD every time I see a header! But I digress.

But do you know where these small business owners that have a family of four and are trying to find the extra $22,000 might find it? It's from cutting one of the staff from their business or cutting two of the staff from their business. Do you know what that means? That means unemployment starts to go up, and that means the staffer who just lost his job—because the small-business owner is trying to pay his own mortgage, pay for his own kids and put food on the table—is going to find it even more difficult. So we see the cycle continue.

Some of us didn't nap through our economics lectures at university and actually turned up to the tutorials, and so we understand some of the basic economic principles that seem to elude those opposite. I think what is very frightening is that we hear lauded by Treasurer Chalmers the fact that he did his PhD on Prime Minister Keating, I believe, and claims that this is his hero. But, if we look at what this government is trying to do, they're moving back to before prime ministers Hawke and Keating. They are refusing to even uphold the values of the accord. They are trying to head back to pre the eighties. Whilst I do remember the recession and the election of Prime Minister Hawke, I was quite young back then, but I do know that Prime Minister Hawke came in and did take an approach, which was supported, if my memory serves me, by the then opposition Treasurer John Howard, making sensible reforms to the Australian economy, floating the Australian dollar and making sure there was a wages accord so that Australia could move into a modern economic climate and have an economy that was able to compete and participate on a world stage. That's not here today, people. No.

The Australian people need to understand we are heading into a time machine. We're back to the seventies and the eighties, where we're going to see small businesses pushed out. We have this facade of 'same job, same pay', which is absolutely so detrimental to the Australian economy. I think today I saw an article that said a $13 billion hole would be blown into the economy—because that's what we can afford at the moment!—a $13 billion hole, thanks to a deceptive policy that's coming through under a pretty slogan, which is actually a complete fallacy.

I'll run through it again for those opposite, who aren't getting it. Your budget in October has consistently contributed to the cost of living for all Australians. It's going up for every Australian. So that means increased grocery bills, increased pressure on supply chains and increased petrol costs and energy inputs going in at every step of the way. Whether it's food production with the safeguard mechanism—you know, agriculture is not included but Incitec Pivot is, because those opposite have struggled to find a farm let alone work on one. Incitec Pivot creates fertiliser, which goes on all food products. So when Incitec Pivot have to put their prices up, input costs go onto agriculture. That means food costs go up.

We know they would love to go back to targeting the owner-drivers of trucks. We know they want to put pressure on that, because they want their union mates and their big trucking companies to have all the work, which isn't how it works out in the bush. But, when they start to move back into the tribunal around trucking and road requirements, we're going to see less trucks on the road, because it won't be viable for owner-operators to participate anymore, so there'll be an increase in getting that food from the farm to market. Then, of course there'll be fewer trucks to get it to the supermarket. The cost of processing any of that food is going to go up, because the energy costs are so much higher and the big processors, that may get caught up in this safeguard mechanism as it moves, are going to have, again, more costs. By the time it hits the supermarket shelves, you are going to have seen a grocery cost hit at about four to six levels for every single product—every product. People talk about the luxury products. We're not talking about families going in and purchasing their foie gras or their truffle salt; we're talking about people trying to buy bananas, people who might even want to buy some mince and perhaps a tomato to make a bolognaise. We're talking about everyday meals that families have around their table every night, and every single one of those ingredients will be going up.

They're going to keep going up, and not because of the war in Ukraine, as they'd like you to believe. If you listen, it's all about Ukraine. It's funny though, because when we were in government the Ukraine war just started and those opposite were: 'How dare you shift it. How dare you look at this,' apart from the fact there was an oil crisis at the time and there were considerable supply chains being hindered by Russia cutting off gas and oil supply to a number of European countries who had mistakenly put all their eggs in one basket. But, now they're in government, it's a very convenient excuse.

Well, guys, it's not the case. This inflation is Canberra based, like the Prime Minister. The thing about inflation is that every Australian pays it. It is a tax on everybody. It doesn't matter if you're 15-years-old and going down to buy a packet of Twisties or you're a mum of four going to buy the groceries for the week, you pay inflation. It doesn't matter if you're on a welfare payment or you're a multimillionaire, you pay inflation. It is a tax on all Australians. Yet inflation is continuing to go up under this government. It's at the highest level it's been in 30 years. Maybe this is what they're trying to do; they're trying to hit rates we saw in the late seventies, because that's where they want to take our IR policy. That's where they want to take us back to—the pre-Prime Minister Hawke and Keating days. They want to go back. Maybe that's what they're trying to do with unemployment rates. Maybe it's what they want to do with interest rates. Maybe that's what they want to do with inflation. They're certainly not interested in boosting productivity. We know that the one thing, the one lever, that will make a difference to inflation is productivity.

In the last 12 months, what have we seen happen with productivity? How's it going? We had all these promises that it was all going to be great—the cost of living was getting better, inflation was going to come down, mortgages were going to come down, energy bills were coming down, grocery bills were coming down, cost-of-living pressures were coming off for all Australians. But you know what we've seen with productivity in the last 12 months? Under Labor's watch, productivity in the last 12 months, since they came to government, has fallen by 4.6 per cent—cracking job, guys! We've literally come out of a global pandemic which the coalition government steered the Australian economy through; we were one of the few economies that maintained a triple-A credit rating. We actually kept people connected to their workplace and did everything we could to support Australians through unprecedented times. Yet, under this lot, we've seen the one tool we've got to fight inflation, in productivity, fall by 4.6 per cent. That, under your stewardship, is so likely to just get worse.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the three appropriation bills being considered. Just last month, Labor handed down their second budget within their first year of being in office. There's been much discussion about the government keeping their election promises. It seems to me the only promise Labor are okay with breaking is their promise that no-one will be left behind. This budget portrays everyday Australians caught up in the cost-of-living crisis currently happening, managing high inflation and high interest rates. This budget is a slap in the face for people who are made to choose between paying their rent, buying medication and groceries, and heating their homes.

Budgets are about choices and priorities. Labor chose—and I will reiterate that word; they have made a political choice here—to put forward a surplus for a political win instead of prioritising people who are doing it tough. Labor chose to raise more money by indexing student debt instead of making meaningful changes to the PRRT. Labor chose to give $41 billion in fossil fuel subsidies and only $14.6 billion to those who are struggling most. And the daily increase of $2.85 to JobSeeker won't even buy you a loaf of bread or a five-pack of noodles in this country.

I don't believe any government when they say they can't afford to do something. The truth is that they don't want to. If the government can afford to spend over a quarter of a billion dollars on stage 3 tax cuts, they can afford to lift everyday Australians out of poverty. With $41 billion of fossil fuel subsidies being given to companies who have absolutely no respect for free, prior and informed consent for First Peoples of this country, in their lands and waters, it seems our fight is as much with the government of the day as it is with the coal and gas billionaires who are destroying our sacred meeting places for both ceremony and cultural business as well as our ancestral songlines and trade routes—which are in fact the social and spiritual fabric of our culture. They are, in that attempt, wrecking the oldest-surviving culture in the world.

It's frankly laughable that this government has positioned itself as ending the climate wars. Their emissions reduction target doesn't even come close to what's needed. They continue to push that gas is in fact a transition fuel. We don't need any more gas. We don't need any more new gas projects being approved; in fact, the 116 currently in the pipeline are what we don't need. Traditional owners don't want them. Climate scientists and environmentalists don't want them. Everyday Australians don't need any more gas than what we already have access to, so everyday Australians want you to stop gaslighting us and stop telling us that that's what we need, because it's for the greedy exporters that are making billion-dollar profits off exporting that gas. That's happening from the Beetaloo to the Barossa to Narrabri to Scarborough. First Nations people across this country have been strongly opposed to the destruction of their country and their cultural heritage. And this is all in the name of corporate gain.

The Tiwi Islands' traditional owners took Santos to the High Court over their Barossa gas project. Santos have claimed that consultation with First Nations people was about sending two emails and making one unanswered phone call to the Tiwi Land Council. Tiwi Islanders argued that this was in fact not consultation, and the High Court agreed. I think most Australians would also agree that this is not what consultation looks like. The fact that this project was approved in the first place shows that there are absolutely serious issues with the consultation requirements for offshore oil and gas projects in this country. The burden of those regulations is absolutely placed on traditional owners. It's placed on them to prove and to challenge those approvals in court, which is not just an expensive process; it's a time-consuming process that some of these traditional owner groups cannot afford to pay for. They don't have a big bag of cash lying around that they can just go to.

The Greens and I were thrilled to see $5.8 million in the October budget for the initial work to establish a makarrata commission. This was a huge step at the time that indicated the Albanese government took the calls for truth and treaty seriously and that they were actually listening to what First Peoples have said. However, there's been no additional money and no additional spending in this budget. In fact we already uncovered during estimates a few weeks ago that $900,000 of this $5.8 million has been spent. We're not even entirely sure what it's been spent on because the bureaucrats didn't actually give us any answers on the day. They said that they would take that on notice. The rest of this money is being held in what's called 'a contingency plan' until after the referendum.

I've said many times before in this place that progress can and progress must happen on all three elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We can do this at the same time. Multitasking is not just for some of us. Governments can also do this. We know that setting up the makarrata commission will take time and it will take negotiation. It could take us many, many years—in fact many decades—to get a treaty in this country, so we absolutely have to get started now. The result of the referendum shouldn't impact on that. It should not impact on progress being made towards a treaty or treaties in this country. The government has committed to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full—truth, treaty and voice—and they need to start showing they are serious about this commitment and start making movement across all of those different pillars of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

I was pleased to see the commitment from the government in this budget for a review of consultation requirements, particularly as the spokesperson for resources for the Australian Greens on offshore projects, and this included with First Nations people. However, this commitment was lumped into the review of carbon capture and storage—a method about which, in fact, their own minister has said: 'It has not been proven to work to the scale that is needed to be a viable option to drive down emissions.' Even more disappointing is the fact that this review has already started. It quietly kicked off at the end of May, and we don't know who's involved in this process, what the time line is or even what the desired outcome is. It's like the best kept secret in Australia. This is a huge opportunity. Given that the Barossa project was a pivotal part of First Nations people standing up, using their voice in this country and saying that the regulation of offshore projects in this country didn't identify them as relevant people, the consultation processes weren't enough.

If the government were actually serious about getting this review right, the minister should have gone to the Tiwi Islands people, sat with them and asked what was required, or he would have been out there telling people in the broader public what is actually happening, when it's happening and when people will be able to have their say. My belief is that First Nations people, as the traditional owners, need to be at the forefront of that, as do climate groups, marine scientists and other businesses that are also impacted by those offshore projects.

This review cannot be like the one for the PRRT changes, where a bunch of high executives from fossil fuel companies locked themselves in a room and decided what changes they were happy with. This has much broader implications. I know Senator McKim and my other colleague Senator Whish-Wilson have done a lot of work on the PRRT in their time here. Speaking of the PRRT and the changes that need to be made to the tax in this budget, they are mere pennies in relation to the profits being made. As I said earlier, the government will be raising more revenue from university students than fossil fuel companies. This is state capture at its finest. It's like the government are an extension of the fossil fuel arm in this country. It's unbelievable.

Fossil fuel companies that are making record-breaking profits off the back of high inflation and, as Senator Hughes said, the invasion of Ukraine are paying little to no tax but are still holding ever so tightly onto those tax credits. Nurses pay more tax than some of these companies. The changes to the current tobacco tax will actually raise more money than the PRRT if Treasurer Chalmers continues with the current narrative. With the Greens in the balance of power I look forward to us pushing this government to make sure that this tax actually raises revenue that is proportional to the profits that these companies make. Stop worrying about what your donations are going to deliver at election time.

We are in a cost-of-living crisis and we are in a climate crisis, and this budget fails to address both of those. Labor have described this budget as being a result of making hard choices. I don't know how many times I heard during budget week, 'We've made the hard choices.' But a choice they made was actually to leave struggling everyday Australians behind. They left the most vulnerable in our communities behind. I know Senator Rice has risen many times in this chamber to talk about JobSeeker, raising its rate and lifting people in this country out of poverty in the current crisis we are in. Still we are not seeing action from the government. We thought we had a change of government last May, but we continue to see the same rhetoric from this government.

Even First Nations communities are being left behind. So even though in this chamber yesterday we were debating the Constitution alteration bill about a Voice to Parliament, we are still ignoring the First Peoples in this country when they say they don't want oil and gas projects on their country. We need to start looking like we are representing the Australian public rather than representing the corporate interests of this nation.

At the request of Senator McKim, I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate notes that Labor's second Budget:

(a) gives a $24.85 a day tax cut to politicians and billionaires, but only $2.85 a day to jobseekers;

(b) gives $16.8 billion over the forward estimates in handouts to wealthy property moguls, but no new money for direct investment in new social and affordable housing;

(c) includes $41 billion over the forward estimates in fossil fuel subsidies, which is more than all the investment in Australia becoming a renewable energy superpower; and

(d) is a betrayal of the people who were promised that no one would be left behind".

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to join others in speaking on the appropriation bills that are before the parliament for debate and deliberation. The job of an elected representative is a pretty basic proposition. We are paid to assist the communities we represent to solve problems. That's it. That is the one thing we—from the Prime Minister to the most junior members of the backbench—have to do. People have different responsibilities. They might have portfolio responsibilities or shadow portfolio responsibilities or be committee chairs—you name it; there are a range of roles we all play—but at the end of the day the one thing we are tasked with doing is to seeking to resolve the problems faced by the communities we represent. I think somewhere along the way this government has lost the memo on that.

I think Senator Cox was right to quote the Prime Minister on one of the most important comments he made on election night, and that was that no Australians would be left behind. It was in the first few paragraphs of his election victory speech, and I think there were a lot of people out there listening to that, following on from having cast their votes that day and the weeks of campaigning where they were promised a range of measures that, if elected, an Albanese Labor government would deliver to make their lives better, to ensure that they wouldn't be left behind. Incidentally, it wasn't just about Australians being left behind—while that is a noble and admirable goal to have, to ensure that not a single member of our country, no citizen, is left behind. He went on to say that no-one in this country would be held back, because we should always support aspiration and opportunity, alongside ensuring that no-one will be left behind.

Now, they were great promises made through the campaign, big words on election night from the Prime Minister, and those words have been echoed—or at least some of them have. Most of my colleagues have referenced, and I will do the same, that promise around electricity prices, the reduction in the cost of electricity by $275 per annum, a promise made nearly 100 times in the lead-up to the election and referenced once by a member of the Labor frontbench since. It's great to see Senator Ayres here. He did make reference to it—the only Labor politician who, since the election, has talked about that promise of reducing power bills by $275. I pay credit to you, Senator Ayres, for being the only one among your colleagues who doesn't shy away from that promise. We are looking forward to holding you to account on that. But those promises were all broken. I will come to those.

But I want to start by turning to my home state of Tasmania, because I took great issue and a high degree of interest in an opinion piece written by a colleague of mine, Senator Anne Urquhart, a great Tasmanian whose heart is in the right place. But she penned this opinion piece titled 'A fairer society and a stronger economy'. I was wondering where she might be writing about—whether she was talking about our country or somewhere else. I went on to read this opinion piece, in a great daily publication, the Advocate newspaper from the north-west coast of Tasmania. Senator Urquhart, who is a very good Tasmanian said: 'How a government decides to direct its resources, what it sees as its priorities and whether it keeps faith with its commitments tells you a lot about who is running the country.' Now, never has a truer word been said, can I tell you. Senator Urquhart goes on to say: 'Labor's budget makes important choices'—much to the point that Senator Cox was making before about tough choices—'It chooses a fairer society and a stronger economy. It chooses to focus on taking the pressure off households and families.'

Now, it's great to say that, and to point to a few things the government might have done—and then completely ignore all the things, the problems, that Australians are facing, be they households or businesses, people who invest to create economic activity and provide employment for other Australians. There was silence when it came to the problems we are to solve—going back to my original point—as elected representatives with one job: to solve the problems our communities face. Senator Urquhart does not go anywhere near talking about dealing with the problems that the people of north-west Tasmania are facing. She talks about a fairer society and a stronger economy, but I struggle to see how, in the two budgets that have been handed down, that's actually been delivered to the people of Tasmania, on any count. At the last election the coalition promised $3 million to support between six and eight aged-care beds in a town called Queenstown, on the west coast of Tasmania.

If we were genuine about making Australia fairer and stronger—and in this case making the north-west coast of Tasmania, the electorate of Braddon, a fairer and stronger part of our country—then funding would have been matched and provided for that facility and that community. We all know about the situation, the pressure faced by our aged-care sector and those who rely upon it: those most in need, those who are at the end of their days, who've made a massive contribution to our country and who deserve the respect and dignity of good quality care—except if you live on the west coast of Tasmania, because $3 million was too much to find in the budget to ensure that people who live in a very remote part of my home state get what they need. I commend the member for Braddon, Mr Gavin Pearce, for calling this out. That community is still waiting for that money; that community still needs it. A fairer society, a stronger economy would do well to have that commitment honoured. The people of the west coast deserve it.

Indeed, we only have to look across to the electorate of Bass, where community infrastructure has gone begging under this government. Commitments were not made to support grassroots sporting activities, for example. And while I enjoy Senator Polley's TikTok videos about what's happening here in Parliament House, I'm more concerned about what's happening—

Honourable Senator:

An honourable senator interjecting—

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'enjoy' is probably a loose term—on the ground in Bass, in the northern part of our state, and how funding isn't being provided to these community groups but instead ripped out of grassroots activities and facilities in that part of the state.

And while Senator Polley is very strong on certain issues and I look forward to working with her on some of them that I will be speaking about later today, I am concerned about her willingness to turn a blind eye to what northern Tasmania is missing out on when it comes to community sporting infrastructure, much in the same way the Labor member for Lyons, Mr Mitchell, has stood idly by while money has been ripped out of roads and infrastructure programs in Tasmania.

We only have to look at the example of the Hobart to Sorell corridor, the Midway Point causeway, which is a massive commuter route for people who head into the Hobart city area for work each day from the south-east suburbs of Greater Hobart. Thirty-five million dollars has been taken out of that vital piece of infrastructure work. The Tasmanian roads investment contingency fund had $62 million taken out of it. The Tasmanian Northern Roads Package stage 2 had $67 million take out of it. Some of these are in Bass, in Braddon and in Lyons; some of them relate to the electorate of Franklin. Right across the state, we're missing out on vital infrastructure at this point in time because of this government.

While according to certain opinion pieces this government is 'building a fairer society and stronger economy' by ripping money out of vital infrastructure projects, we have a commitment from this government to fund a $240 million waterfront stadium in Hobart's CBD. You know what? That's not the issue. The issue is how this government have chosen to fund this waterfront stadium. We already know that their priority isn't aged-care facilities for the west coast of Tasmania. It isn't grassroots sports infrastructure in northern Tasmania, in the electorate of Bass. It isn't roads for the people who live in south-eastern Lyons. Senators Urquhart and Polley and Mr Mitchell have made their views clear: they're happy to see the funding go to a stadium and not these on-ground infrastructure projects which would actually benefit the community. We know where their priorities are.

But what's worse is the terrible approach they've taken to ensuring that we do actually miss out as a result of this decision. This funding has not been exempted from GST calculations. At estimates, I asked whether the government had guaranteed that this funding would be exempt from GST calculations for the state of Tasmania. No guarantee could be given. No Labor member from Tasmania had asked at that point in time whether that guarantee could be given.

As we all know, GST for a state like Tasmania—it is a smaller state; it has a smaller population; it has a smaller economy. One of the beauties of Federation is that no matter where you live you are entitled to the same level of support when it comes to government services, no matter whether you live in downtown Sydney or remote or rural Tasmania. GST funding is essential when it comes to health, when it comes to education, when it comes to other essential services that Tasmanians deserve. But under the decision and the arrangement that's been struck up between the Albanese Labor government and the Tasmanian government, we will miss out.

Now, I will point out that the Tasmanian Treasurer, Mr Michael Ferguson, has asked for this exemption to occur, like it has with other projects—like it did with the Mersey Community Hospital $730 million payment to the state of Tasmania for them to take back on what was under federal responsibility. The Mersey Community Hospital, just outside of Devonport, in the community of Latrobe, was exempt from GST calculations. I know that because I helped broker the deal. It was a good deal. But, for this one, not a single Labor senator from Tasmania, not Mr Mitchell and not Ms Collins, who sits in cabinet, has been able to, for the people of Tasmania—I see Senator McKim, who agrees with me on this. Ms Collins has not done her job for the people she represents: to ensure that they don't lose health funding for the sake of this stadium.

The funding's coming; the deal's been done. Tassie will get a team. It's now obviously a matter for the Tasmanian parliament. But the matter for this crew here, the Australian government, the Albanese Labor government, is: are you actually pro-Tasmania or pro-Canberra? Are you going to protect Canberra's interests and make sure you don't have to pay twice, or are you going to do the right thing by the people of Tasmania and make sure that we don't lose a cent when it comes to health, education and other essential services? I've heard zip so far. I hope I hear more before this debate concludes.

All of this, the abandonment of responsibility on the part of the Tasmanian Labor federal MPs and senators—I say that seriously: 'abandonment'—who are happy to come up here and do TikTok videos talking about their commitment to sports infrastructure in downtown Hobart but walk right away from a commitment to ensure Tasmania is no worse off when it comes to health, is an abrogation of duty. It doesn't speak to a fairer society, it certainly doesn't speak to a stronger economy and it breaks my heart. I have to tell you, Deputy President McLachlan, that, when colleagues who come from my community so happily walk away from commitments they made just a year ago and from the people back home who are getting on with trying to pay their power bills, make sure they have enough money in their bank account for their mortgage repayment, put fuel in the car so they can get their kids to school and keep the heating on through winter, they don't know what's going on up here. It's our job, as the opposition, to make sure people do know that's exactly what Senator Urquhart, Senator Polley, Senator Brown, Senator Bilyk, Mr Mitchell and Ms Collins are doing. They're abandoning their state. They're abandoning Tasmanians, even though they say differently.

I look forward to Senator Urquhart penning an opinion piece to tell us, of course, that she has secured a commitment to have the stadium funding exempt from GST. I asked about it in this place over a month ago. The Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Wong—in fairness to her, I don't expect her to be across the ins and outs of where things were at, but it seemed like a pretty low-order priority to this government, and that distresses me because Tasmanians, like anyone who lives on the big island, are Australians, too. They shouldn't miss out on health funding just to back in a group of Tasmanian federal Labor MPs and senators who see their job as protecting the firm up here in Canberra, not looking after the interests of people in Tasmania who are doing it tough. They've got their priorities wrong. No matter what they write in papers and no matter what they say, they've dropped the ball and they've let Tasmanians down. This is something that I will make sure as many Tasmanians as possible know.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I believe this second Albanese government budget is a time for reflection, a reflection on what this government promised and what it's delivered. There's been much talk about the Prime Minister's broken promises, without any thought to the question: were these promises ever designed to be kept, or were these strategic promises designed to hide this government's Soviet-style agenda during the election campaign? It's that agenda that I speak to now. It's an agenda of making people reliant on government handouts, to make them captive to the government. A compliant, captive population is the building block of a Soviet-style society that this Prime Minister appears to have supported in his youth.

As part of this agenda, rather than creating viable private sector jobs, the Prime Minister is destroying them. We've lost 1,500 jobs in transport with the loss of Scott's Refrigerated Logistics in the name of net zero—trucking. We've lost jobs and risk losing entire communities in coal regions, including the Bowen Basin in our state of Queensland, in the name of net zero—mining. We've lost jobs in the live sheep export industry, which Labor is shutting down in the name of net zero—grazing. We're set to lose more jobs and more family farms in the agricultural sector as Minister Plibersek restarts water buybacks in the name of net zero—agriculture. 'No water buybacks' was another broken promise which all along was really a bald-faced lie.

Net zero has made Australians poorer, transferring tens of billions of dollars in wealth from taxpayers to the government's mates in the solar and wind scam, who then export that wealth to foreign tax havens. Solar and wind are parasitic mal-investments. They're parasitic and they kill their host, the Australian economy. All this is wrapped in a feel-good cloak of saving the planet. Supported by affluent Australians who have led lives of plenty, these people now embrace the climate agenda to ease their conscience about leading lives of plenty. In reality, net zero is a fraudulent plan to replace productive energy generation with fairytale generation designed to create energy shortage, and from that shortage comes control. The only winners will be the billionaire carpetbaggers who are driving this agenda through their ownership of media, energy companies and, of course, political parties. The Prime Minister has given in to the foreign controlled Australian banks, removing penalties for criminal banking behaviour. Surely, criminal banking behaviour will follow.

Let me remind people: former Prime Minister John Howard did the same thing in 2003 when he tore up the banking code of practice and gave the green light to banks to tear apart the laws of fairness and decency, laws that protected everyday Australians from financial exploitation. Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones has withdrawn penalties for criminal bankers in his financial accountability scheme proposal. He really is a friend—a great friend—of the big banks and their foreign owners. What, may I ask, is he doing in the Labor Party? The Prime Minister is hollowing out the bush, transferring up to two-thirds of Australian land area to the United Nations through native title and locking it away from Aboriginals. The Prime Minister has cancelled one submarine that will never be built and replaced it with another submarine that will never be built, all the while destroying Australia's defensive capability. Everyday Australia will feel the result of this mismanagement all at once, and then unrest will result. That's why the Prime Minister and our weakened, complicit military leadership are training Australian troops to attack Australian protesters. Clearly, the troops on the streets threatening and intimidating Australians into staying silent in their homes were just on a training exercise for what's to come. Yet the future is never dictated; it can only be manipulated.

Conservatives can retake government in the next election if we come together and do more to spread our message of economic prosperity, family, community and Australian values. I've said this before in this place: abundance is not a dirty word; it's a wonderful word. One Nation is the party of abundance, with policies that generate wealth for everyday Australians and prevent wealth from being leeched away from Australia. Conservatives must do more to drown out the self-interest of the presstitute media, who are advancing the interests of predatory billionaires on their share register over the interests of everyday Australians. Here's an example: in the recent Senate committee hearing into One Nation's anti-vaccine-mandate bill, we heard of a fine young Australian killed by vaccine mandates imposed by her employer, SG Global. SG Global is part-owned by the Vanguard investment fund. Their primary shareholder is a South African company that is partly owned by Vanguard. They use financing instruments from Vanguard. Vanguard use their ownership to force vaccine mandates that require the purchase of vaccines from Pfizer, a company in which Vanguard are the largest institutional shareholder. Do you see how it works? That's how the rich become richer and everyday Australians lose wealth, lose health and, with no explanation or media interest, lose their lives in unexplained deaths. There have been more than 35,000 excess deaths in Australia. In a world run by everyday Australians, this sort of crony capitalism would rightly be considered racketeering, yet no action has been taken by the uniparty to uncover the truth and dispense justice to the crooked.

What we hear from the Prime Minister is rhetoric around plans for better days accompanied by handouts to make it look like he cares—not to do good but to look good. Handouts are government funded fake jobs which will not lift the poor out of poverty. They will not provide a sustainable breadwinner job that is so necessary for starting and supporting a family. The indisputable truth here is that wealth drives social change, not the other way around. Handouts take wealth; they do not create it. This is why every policy that comes out of the antihuman Greens, the teals and the Labor Party is about making people poorer and taking their homeownership, their spending power, their opportunity and, worse, their pride in order to break their spirit.

This is not an unfortunate outcome of Albanese government policies. This is the agenda the Prime Minister was covering up with his empty promises during the election campaign. It is a deliberate strategy to return the public to poverty, where they can be controlled, indoctrinated and caged in their 15-minute cities. Even the Bank of England stated recently that the public had to get used to being poorer. To hell with that. Corporate ownership and influence in Australia have gone too far. Health has been compromised, as I spoke about during my recent matter of public importance on a COVID royal commission, which the Albanese government promised before it was elected. Education has been compromised, as I spoke about in my two-minute statement on the sex education program of the UN and the UN's World Health Organization that can only be called child sexual grooming. Energy has been compromised, as Treasurer Chalmers's $15 billion income support in the budget shows. This giveaway is an admission of the failure of parasitic solar and wind energy to provide energy that people can afford.

It's not just energy, of course. Food is becoming much more expensive, and that process will continue until everyday Australians eat the bugs or the lab meat—the in-vitro, cancerous meat. If this is not obvious to the chamber yet, then let me use an example from the Netherlands, where the globalist government of World Economic Forum lackey Mark Rutte has announced that they're buying back 1,000 family farms from Dutch farmers and rewilding them, using taxpayer money to buy back farms and shut the farms, shutting food production. The purchase agreement made at the point of an administrative gun requires the farmers to agree to never farm their land or any other land in the European Union ever again—all that knowledge gone, all that experience gone and all those farmers prevented from ever growing food again. Is this where Australia is heading? Under the antihuman Greens and the soviet Albanese government, the answer is yes, no doubt. I call on the Prime Minister to categorically rule out purchasing and rewilding Australian farms and to rule out taking food off the table and the future away from rural Australians. One Nation's message to the Prime Minister is this: Australia is not the Soviet Union, and it never will be.

It's time Australian conservatives left behind the fifth column of globalist infiltration that has infected parts of the Liberal and National parties and returned to genuine conservativism. History has shown that the only way to lift people out of poverty and oppression is through economic progress. That's the basis for human progress. The last 170 years have been remarkable for that. The last 30 years have seen a backward step under policies adopted from the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. History has taught us that some rich greedy bastard will always try and take everything for themselves. It is, though, only in recent years that the Labor and Liberal parties have decided to let them do that, no doubt in response to pressure from the party of the rich, the teals. The Liberals seem to have forgotten one of their founding principles: wealth in the hands of everyday Australians is the antidote to oppression and tyranny.

One Nation will grow the wealth of everyday Australians and drive Australia forward using our abundant, cheap means of power generation, coal, to produce clean, environmentally responsible baseload power—reliable, secure, stable, synchronous baseload power. This will provide an answer to net zero for those who have joined the UN and World Economic Forum's alliance and its net zero cult, while we will also save the national silverware—and by that I mean our productive capacity.

One Nation will use vehicles driven by internal-combustion engines that power our productive capacity in a way that electric vehicles can only ever pretend to do, at a fraction of the cost of those monstrous electric vehicles—inefficient resource hogs. One Nation will build infrastructure, including through Project Iron Boomerang, the Outback Way project, the Gladstone port upgrade and the Hells Gate water and hydro project. These are Queensland projects that will provide breadwinner jobs for 100,000 Australians and add 20 per cent to our gross domestic product. The longer the Albanese government wrecking ball continues, the more Australia will need a One Nation conservative government to restore wealth and opportunity to everyday Australians.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to bring a human context to this debate. I note that we have four Queensland senators in the chamber at the moment—Senator Roberts, Senator Chisholm, Senator McDonald and me—and each and every one of us would care about the people of Ipswich. My office is located in Springfield, which is within the Ipswich City Council area.

There is a wonderful organisation there called Ipswich Assist, and they've been operating a food bank for quite some time. Recently they had a freezer break down, which was a desperate issue for them because they get 100 kilograms of meat donated from JBS meatworks in the area and they need that freezer to provide for the people in the community who rely on them. The community rallied, and enough funds were actually raised for two freezers. I give my deep compliments to Jason Budden and his team at Ipswich Assist and also congratulate JBS for making that contribution.

When I visited recently, Jason and his team told me that there is an ever-increasing demand for the relief that they provide. They assist over 600 people a week in relation to cost-of-living pressures, and the feedback from Jason and his team is that they're starting to see people who they've never seen before. They are seeing families where there is someone with employment, but, with the impact of interest rates, inflation, grocery prices, electricity prices and rent increases, there is a cost-of-living crisis, and Ipswich Assist are at the coalface of dealing with that crisis.

So there is a profound human dimension to this. People are struggling across this country. At the time when the last budget was brought down, those on this side of the chamber raised questions and concerns about whether or not that budget was fit for purpose for this point in time. I made a contribution in this place and spoke about how it was a big-taxing, big-spending and expansionary budget which, in my view, would contribute to inflation and which heightens the risk of a further interest rate rise. We saw that interest rate rise, and that hits every family's bottom line.

I commend to everyone an article that was in the West Australian recently, written by my good friend Senator Dean Smith, in relation to the scourge of inflation and the need for leadership at the highest levels in this country to be focused on defeating inflation. I would recommend that everyone read that article. It was a very thoughtful article and an excellent contribution to the debate, because inflation is the great hidden tax. It impacts every single person in this country. It's a regressive hidden tax in the sense that it hurts those at the lower income end of the spectrum more than it hurts those at the upper end, because those at the lower end of the income spectrum have less discretion around their spending because they're struggling to meet the necessities of life. I think Senator Smith encapsulated those thoughts very well in terms of his arguments.

I did want to go to some detail with respect to the last inflation increase and how this translated into actual figures impacting all Australians. When this was released, there was a statement made by Mr Marcel Thieliant, Senior Economist at Capital Economics. He said, 'It now looks more likely than not that Q2 inflation will overshoot the RBA's forecast of 6.3 per cent.' (Time expired)

Debate interrupted.