Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I was asked about the local price watch activities of my team and my volunteers. I think the question demonstrates a lot about the mindset of those opposite. It was those opposite who only last year said working Australian families have never been better off. That is what they were saying last year. This year we have the so-called concern for cost-of-living pressures from fuel and from the supermarket. I know what they were saying last year about our activities when we were talking about the things that really mattered to Australian families—and the government are still talking about those things. We are putting in place policies to deal with them, but I will come to those in a moment. There seems to be a competition on the other side of the House. They are trying to outdo the former Prime Minister’s comment that working families had never been better off. We have had, since the election, the comment from the member for North Sydney that he did not know what was happening under Work Choices. Do you remember that? He had no idea that people’s wages and working conditions were being ripped away under Work Choices. Of course, we had, in the middle of last year, the comment by the former Treasurer that he had inflation right where he wanted it—

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