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

I start by associating myself with the comments of Senator Bragg in his two-minute statement. Today I'd like to talk about the cost of living and just how grim things are for so many Australians. I'm concerned that while, as parliamentarians, we talk about the cost of living, many of us don't fully appreciate just how hard so many people are doing it. They are making decisions like, 'Do I put food on the table or do I fill that script that the doctor says I need—or do I even go to the doctor, with the gap fee I may have to pay?' We're seeing increases in the cost of housing, insurance, medical service gap fees and energy bills.

When are we going to start dealing with some of the root causes of this? When will we start truly looking at household energy bills and dealing with them through electrification, through getting people off gas so they don't have to pay international prices for our own gas here in Australia? When will we truly start to look at and address things like the chronic lack of competition, whether that's in insurance or in our supermarkets? There is so much to do, and I urge the major parties to turn their minds to this.

The cost-of-living crisis is clearly not being experienced equally across our communities, and that brings us to the growing inequality we're seeing in this country and the intergenerational inequality. As far as I can see, a lot of that comes down to housing. We have to deal with the housing crisis and we have to start looking at our tax settings, which treat housing as an investment vehicle, not as a human right—not as something that everyone should be able to afford in our communities, to unlock thriving families and thriving communities. There is so much to do in this space. Again, let's start to deal with the root causes and not just paper over the gaps.