House debates

Tuesday, 23 November 2010

Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Budget Measures) Bill 2010

Second Reading

6:37 pm

Photo of Alan TudgeAlan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When the Labor Party went to the election in 2007 their big pitch to the electorate regarded the cost of living. They made the claim that the Howard government had given up on working families and their day-to-day concerns. They claimed that only the Labor Party was in tune with their needs. So they talked about petrol prices going up. They talked about grocery prices. They talked about electricity prices. They talked about housing affordability and they even had, if I recall correctly, a housing affordability summit. They also, of course, talked about interest rates. The cost-of-living pressure facing everyday Australian families was one of the central themes in their bid to be elected.

They told us that they had plans to fix the cost-of-living pressures. They were going to take the pressures off families. Prices were going to drop. They had two big policies to supposedly address the issue of the cost of living: GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch. So this was their claim, their pitch and their basis for being elected in 2007. We now know that this claim, which helped the Labor Party get elected in 2007, was based on naivety or was a lie. I do not know which one it was. Perhaps they honestly thought that a website to monitor grocery prices would actually bring down the costs of fruit and vegetables, milk and bread. Perhaps they did. Perhaps they honestly thought that a website to monitor petrol would actually bring down prices at the bowser. Maybe they were that naive to think that those things would actually make a difference to everyday prices.

I am prepared to give the Labor Party that benefit of the doubt, but my suspicion is that Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and the Labor Party knew that their policies would make no difference to the cost-of-living pressures. My suspicion is that they went to the election—

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