Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

Well, it's budget day, and it's absolutely extraordinary that, just now, on the eve of an election, after almost a decade in government, apparently the Liberals and the Nationals have discovered that people are struggling under the cost-of-living pressures. Newsflash people—it's been happening for quite a while now. But with this government's last-minute revelation comes excuse after excuse that it's not its fault. They don't hold a hose, and, apparently, they don't want to use any of the privileges or powers of government to actually help people in my community. What they do want to do is hand down what the member for Rankin has so appropriately called a spakfilla budget. What they want is a set piece performance replete with spending announcements that will never be delivered, which are more about their desperate attempts to hold onto privilege and power than it is about bringing forward any meaningful, substantive and, importantly, enduring benefits to the people I came here to represent, people like 89-year-old widow Mavis from Mount Eliza, who, after paying her rates, utilities and bills, has just $50 of her pension left to cover food for the week, or like Phil from Carrum Downs, who doesn't know how he's going to keep pace with the rise in essentials, and Morrie from Langwarrin, who told me he is totally disillusioned with the Liberal-National government because his future is worse than his past. He needs a new Albanese Labor government; that is what he needs.

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