Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's no doubt that many Australian households are doing it tough right now because of the cost-of-living crisis that we inherited from the previous government. It takes a long time to turn around a decade of neglect, but our policies are starting to make a real difference in Australians' lives. Before we came to government, we promised that we would address this crisis by getting wages moving again and by providing cost-of-living relief while putting downward pressure on inflation.

The previous government gave us a string of deficit budgets and projected deficits as far as the eye could see. We've delivered $77 billion in savings and the first back-to-back surpluses in decades. We inherited inflation of 6.5 per cent. Headline inflation is now at 2.8 per cent and back within the Reserve Bank's target band. Annual wage growth was at an average of 2.2 per cent under the coalition. Under Labor, it's at an average of 3.8 per cent, with real wage growth for the last four quarters, despite the mess we inherited.

Australian households are benefiting from tax cuts, energy bill relief, cheaper medicines, more bulk-billing and a range of other relief measures. The opposition complain about the pressures on Australian households time and time again, hoping Australians will conveniently forget the challenging conditions that we inherited from them and their absolutely chaotic time in government. They're also hoping Australians will not notice that their policies will make the situation worse. The opposition have already announced that, if they returned to government, they would wind back many of our cost-of-living measures, as well as our reforms that are getting wages moving again. They will push up energy bills by hundreds of dollars through their expensive and misguided nuclear plan bubble. The coalition cannot be trusted on the cost of living.