Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

You've got to wonder: is it dirty-deal Thursday or clearing-the-decks Thursday? Or is it a little bit of both going on—the dirty deals scattered around the chamber or the clearing the decks? Apparently, there's quite a lot of deck clearing going on both here and in the other place.

I hear, while we've been here, toiling away doing the Senate's business—of course, under another outrageous guillotine by those opposite—that, in the other place, it's been valedictory speeches. Labor MPs are saying farewell. They're saying goodbye. Do they know something that we don't know? Is there a reason why there's been such a rush from the Albanese government to clear the decks, to deal with legislation and to guillotine after guillotine and get it all done but also have their Labor MPs say, 'Ta-ta, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye', as they leave this place?

Is the Prime Minister really that worried that the Australian economy is about to crash that he is willing to give up 10 months of his term? Is Mr Albanese really that worried that interest rates staying higher for longer, inflationary pressures on Australians staying as high as they are and a cost-of-living crisis that Australians are facing mean he should run scared to the polls? Is that what he's thinking?

Well, perhaps that is what he should be thinking. Mr Albanese perhaps should be worried about the fact that his policies continue to make life harder for Australians and that, every single day that goes by, Australians see how those policies are making life harder for them and they keep feeling the pain of higher interest rates and higher inflation and of not even being able to afford the basics of living anymore.

As we saw in question time today, there are revelations that Australians are buying less chicken meat. It's the most consumed and most affordable protein in Australia, and people are cutting back on it. If Australians are at the point that they're cutting back on chicken meat, what else are they forgoing in their day-to-day lives? Just how stretched are their budgets?

This is a government that was elected promising that Australian families would be better off. They promised that electricity bills would be down some $275. What happened to the $275? Trashed, gone, abandoned by the government. Instead they say, 'But we're giving people $300 this year.' What has the Reserve Bank said about that? They've called it out as the trickery that it is. It's a one-off. Bills will spike right back afterwards, and Australians will be left worse off as always. This government promised Australians would be better off, and yet real household disposable income is down 7.5 per cent under the Albanese Labor government. Prices are up. Electricity is up. Household costs are up. But household disposable income is down. It's no wonder Australians are cutting back on the raw essentials like chicken meat.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

KFC!

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed, it's no wonder they are cutting back on even just a basic night out at Macca's or at KFC. The reports that are coming in now from across Australia show just how tough Australians are doing it.

This is a government that hasn't just broken those promises. They promised that the stage 3 tax cuts would be delivered in full. But, no, they junked that for a temporary bandaid measure. That's what this government has done with everything: temporary bandaid measures just to get them through the next election.

The questions that today is igniting are: Just how soon will that election be? How scared is Mr Albanese that things are going from bad to worse? How worried is Mr Albanese that Australians feeling the pain are going to give his government the boot? How concerned is Mr Albanese that Australian households are going to keep feeling that pressure mounting and mounting and mounting? So here we are with a government clearing the decks, a government rushing through and guillotining legislation sight unseen, a government clearly panicked and letting Australians down.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, that was one of the most ridiculous speeches I've ever heard! Here we have an opposition talking about the cost of living and the pressures on the Australian public, and they're the ones that voted against every initiative that we've brought into this place to take cost-of-living pressures off of the Australian public.

We know it's tough out there, but they want to make it tougher, because they vote down every initiative. Whether it's medicines, whether it's supporting Medicare or whether it's making energy prices cheaper out there, they vote it down every single time. When it comes to labour rights and to actually being able to negotiate a better wage increase, these are the people that don't support minimum-wage increases, and they're talking to us about the cost of living! They have no understanding of the responsibility they have when they come into this place to the Australian public, because if they did they'd be voting with us.

Then they have the audacity to complain about the fact that we want to get on with business and make sure that we've got legislation going through this parliament to support people right across the economy. They want to bog it down with either saying no or doing nothing. And guess what? They're consistently saying no, and they're consistently doing nothing.

Look at the things that they've turned around and supported. One of the craziest things was opposing the HAFF, the Housing Australia Future Fund. We've got 50,000 homes that could be built, and what does Senator Bragg do? He starts bagging the whole concept of making sure that we give some of the most disadvantaged people in our community, people that can't afford housing, an opportunity to turn it around and have the security of housing. Who are the people that they're making it difficult for? They're making it difficult for people that are victims of domestic violence. They simply don't like the idea that governments are here to support people through difficult times, to support the community and to make sure that things are better. They are simply about saying no and doing nothing. We want to make sure that essential workers don't get priced out of their own communities, and those opposite vote against it. They have it in their DNA. They just can't help themselves. Whenever it comes to supporting somebody or whenever it comes to supporting the community, they simply vote against it, and then they complain about things being tough. They always want to make it tougher. They consistently make it tougher.

Then you have to look at the question of what is in their DNA. In my home state of New South Wales, during the 12 long years that the Liberals and Nationals were in government, we saw that they turned around $3.5 billion worth of social housing that the community desperately needs right now. That $3.5 billion worth of social housing was taken out of the market—4,205 homes. That's what they did. They don't care about the Australian community. Then don't care about good policy. They care about figures on a sheet of paper that don't add up. We know that because, if they really cared, they'd be supporting the policies that this government has been putting in place to make a difference.

When you look again at what's in Labor's DNA, we're making sure that we tackle the issue of housing. Again, in my home state of New South Wales, the New South Wales government has made the largest single investment in social housing in the state's history. Over the period 2024 to 2035, over 8,400 new homes will be for women and children fleeing domestic violence. Again, those opposite just don't like that idea. Don't they actually talk to people out there in the community? The community is actually against what you're saying because it makes no sense. It's heartless. It's bad policy. It doesn't actually lift the country. It doesn't lift my home state.

Of course, when you start looking at initiatives that have been happening on that front, there is this lunacy and this obsession about what's happening with Cbus. You may be surprised to know—and I know they actually know; they just don't like saying it—that these superannuation funds are dually owned and managed. They're owned by their members, and they're managed by both employers and unions, and many of them have other directors. Some of them have different independent chairs. They're all accountable to APRA and other agencies. All these things are so, but they've got this obsession about Cbus—the fund that has turned around and received the Specialist Fund of the Year award for 2024, as well as Best Fund: Member Services and Best Fund: Responsible Investment. That's what they actually don't like.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question really has to be asked: what is going on here? But the one thing that you can be assured of with this government is that you probably won't know what's going on until after it's happened. I say that because, if ever there was a government that can go down in history as being the most opaque government I have ever known or seen, it has got to be this one. Probably what's most galling about this is that they went to the last election telling everybody that they were going to be transparent. You are absolutely the anthesis of transparency, as we saw just a few minutes ago.

At the eleventh hour, they come into this place and they guillotine legislation. There was not one word about these three particular pieces of legislation all week in discussions with the government about facilitating the sensible and calm passage of legislation through this place, as the government is required to do. Instead they say: 'No, we'll do that and then, at the last minute, we'll come in here and crunch a whole heap of legislation.' So the question has to be: Why? Why did they need to guillotine stuff this afternoon? I'll tell you why the government guillotines. The government guillotines because it does not have the capacity or the capability to control the management of this chamber. They can't control the chamber. We've seen guillotine after guillotine after guillotine after guillotine. But what Australians probably should be asking is: Why are they doing it today? Why have we seen the kinds of speeches we've seen in the other place? Why have we seen all of the valedictory speeches? This government probably needs to be honest. What are they up to? Stop treating Australians like mugs, and stop keeping them in the dark.

But one of the things that Australians should be very, very fearful of, if you have a look at what happened today, is the alliance between the Labor Party and the Greens—the next government that this government over there will seek to form if they are fortunate enough at the election. I'm not sure that the electorate is so stupid as to re-elect you, and I'll certainly do everything that I can to make sure the electorate knows what an awful government you are. The worst of it is that, every time they want to get something, they jump back into bed with the Greens. They fight like cat and dog—I've never seen anybody fight like they have all week—but, when the going really gets tough and the rubber hits the road, who jumps into bed with who? It's the Labor Party and the Greens—one bed, two parties—every single time. We're seeing this government move more and more to the left.

The other thing that I think is really worth mentioning is that they are all talk and no action. We've heard contributions in this place on many occasions about all of these amazing things the government has apparently done. All you've done is to issue press releases and headline announcements. How many houses have you built? Absolutely zero. How much have you got electricity prices down? You haven't got electricity prices down; you've actually sent them through the roof. How many times have you come in here and pretended that you've delivered things? Yesterday, how disingenuous was the response in relation to domestic violence, for what you've done! What you've done—as you've done with every other portfolio—is: you've written reports, you've done plans, and you've delivered absolutely nothing.

The one thing that the Prime Minister is very good at doing is insulting Australians, as we saw the other night. What a massive insult to Australian farmers. I come from rural and regional Australia, and our farmers are absolutely amazing. If it wasn't for our communities outside of the capital cities, Mr Chalmers wouldn't be backing a surplus. It's a windfall surplus, on the back of our farmers and on the back of our mining sector. He has done not one thing to contribute towards his surplus; it has actually been our rural and regional communities. But Mr Albanese thought it was okay the other night to be so unbelievably insulting as to say what he did at the AgriFutures rural women's gala night. You couldn't have picked a worse audience, really. What an absolutely tin-eared, inner-city, woke Prime Minister we have, who would then absolutely insult every single woman from the regions, and particularly those women from the regions who were in the Great Hall, who actually come not only from farming communities but from livestock communities. It was just absolutely insulting to a T.

We've seen the CFMEU bill shoved through here this week. They were pretending that they were actually doing something.

The reality is: Australians aren't so stupid. They know that they are worse off under this government. There would not be one person in this country who would be able to stand up and say that they feel better off than they were when this government was elected. I believe that, when the government go to the election, when they go to the ballot box, Australians will tell them exactly what they think. They'll think of all the stuff that the government has done to them, then coming in here and patting itself on the back as if it had done some wonderful job! I think that the electorate will realise that you are all talk and no action. You are sneaky. You are tricky. And you are weak.

Lisa Darmanin (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to make my contribution this afternoon. I think that this government has a really proud history and is working hard every day for working Australians and all Australians.

Far from some concern about why we are seeing valedictory speeches in the other house, I think that we should be absolutely celebrating Linda Burney and my friend Brendan O'Connor for the outstanding contributions they've made to the Australian community over many, many years. As for 'all talk, no action', Australians are better off under this government.

In terms of inflation, these are the facts. Inflation peaked later here than in most other comparable nations. Rates started rising here later than in most other comparable nations, and they rose by less in Australia than in most of those nations. We've seen, around the world, that inflation can zigzag on the way down, and the last push is always the hardest. Our budget is putting downward pressure on inflation, not upward pressure. Inflation is now much lower than the 6.1 per cent we had, which was inherited at the election.

This government has turned big Liberal deficits into Labor surpluses by banking the majority of revenue upgrades, finding savings and restraining spending in the budget. Those opposite promised to deliver a surplus each and every year. That's right—they promised to deliver a surplus each and every year. But they delivered none.

The RBA governor has been clear that our back-to-back surpluses are helping our fight against inflation. The forecast from the RBA also confirms that our cost-of-living relief in this year's budget will directly reduce inflation in our economy. I reference Michele Bullock, the RBA governor, when she spoke to estimates on 5 June 2024: 'I think fiscal policy has been running a surplus the last couple of years, so I would say that has been helping.' The ABS has shown our cost-of-living policies are helping take some of the edge off inflation, and the revised RBA forecasts expect that too.

We are willing partners in the fight against inflation, and we are doing our bit, with the responsible way we are delivering the cost-of-living help and with the two consecutive surpluses, which the RBA governor has said are helping. Our job, as the government, is to recognise the weaknesses in the economy and the pressures people are under, which we deeply do, as we go about getting on top of inflation in a way that doesn't smash the economy and smash people. The Leader of the Opposition can't front up and explain his risky nuclear gamble—there's a bit of a lack of transparency there, I would say—or how his dangerous supermarket policies would work without pushing up prices.

I'd also like to make a couple of points on the comments around our government doing nothing about family and domestic violence leave, and our response in that regard. I take real issue with that because I know firsthand the work this government has done to help women and children escaping family violence. We made the very important decision to provide paid family violence leave to all workers in this country. That's 10 days of paid family violence leave. Family and domestic violence leave for people in work is extremely important. I have spoken to workers across Victoria who have faced job insecurity because of family violence. They have been unable to deal with the pressures of moving house and looking after their children, who had to change school, whilst maintaining a connection to the workplace.

Economic security for women who are facing family violence is extremely critical to enabling them to leave a violent relationship. Paid family violence leave provides the economic security to ensure that women can leave a violent relationship and keep their job, rather than being in a situation where they have to choose between making sure their kids are looked after, with a roof over their head, and their own personal safety. I applaud this government for the work it has done in that area, let alone the many others in the national plan to address family violence in our country.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As has become apparent, Australians will most likely be going to the polls sooner rather than later, and they need to ask themselves: Who do they trust to lead this country based on facts as opposed to ideology? Who do they trust to put the interests of the Australian people and the national interest ahead of ideology?

I rise today to take note of the answers that were given to a question about Minister Plibersek's decision leading to the failure of a project to create a gold mine which was going to be delivering jobs. This is a government that said that it was going to be transparent and that it cared more about workers, but last week what did we see? This was a project that had passed all of the federal and state planning approvals. It had the support of the environment department that Minister Plibersek oversees, and it had the support of the local Aboriginal land council near Orange, which is the statutory body with cultural authority under New South Wales legislation. All those groups had said that the project should go ahead and that there were no cultural issues for Indigenous Australians, but Minister Plibersek was persuaded to rule against the proposal for this mine—a $1 billion gold mine—after listening to a dissident Aboriginal corporation that is registered with just 18 members, who only list their first names on the website of the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations. This is a corporation that has had complaints made about it before because of a lack of transparency. Not only does this deny Australians jobs in that case, but it introduces sovereign risk at a time when we need investors to come to Australia to invest in projects that will help in growing our resources base. If you look at Australia's GDP, it is actually our resources that are a large part of what funds good health care, good education, roads, infrastructure, defence and a range of other things. But this is a consistent pattern we see, where ideology drives the actions of this government.

The cost of living is a huge issue for Australians, and so you would think that, with the constraints that drive up the cost of things like electricity, such as availability of gas, the government would be going all out to make sure that we got more gas into the system. Yet the Environmental Defenders Office have received more funding from this government so that they can continue their activities against resource sector companies like Santos. Eventually the court system works; in January this year the courts found that the EDO actually tutored their witnesses and relied on conflicted evidence, so the case was thrown out. So eventually the Santos development of a new gas field in the Barossa field can go ahead but at great cost and great delay, which ultimately will be passed on to the Australian people. The Albanese government are prepared to fund that, but they're not prepared to challenge the decisions that were made on similar grounds when the waste repository at Kimba was knocked back by a court. Everyone was flabbergasted because that decision changed the whole basis of freehold land and the rights that an owner has to dispose of their land as they see fit.

On this issue of mining: if we see sovereign risk rising in the areas of energy and mining, we also see sovereign risk rising relating to our ability to be a reliable partner to our alliance partners, to like-minded nations, when we talk about things like critical minerals. For those who aren't aware, goldmines are often the same places where we see reserves of things like antimony, which is a critical element in semiconductors and EVs and for defence and modern technology. If we can't get investors to invest in things like the Hillgrove deposits and others because of this sovereign risk, then we will not be able to be a reliable supplier of the critical minerals that are needed to overcome the kind of coercive supply we see coming out of the Chinese Communist Party. When we go to the polls, Australian people should ask: who do we trust to govern transparently and in the national interest?

Question agreed to.