Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

TOU () (): I will agree with those opposite on two points: firstly, inflation affects us all. There is no-one untouched by rising costs. They are going to feel it at the grocery checkout, at the bowser, when they go to pay their childcare fees, undoubtedly, and those who are on our lowest incomes will feel it the most because they have very little left in their budget to be able to stretch to meet rising costs. Families are struggling at the moment, and there is a difficult road ahead. We heard from the Treasurer about inflation being likely to get worse over coming months, and we are in the midst of a perfect storm. There's no doubt about that. A war in the Ukraine, stretched global supply chains, rising energy costs and the recent floods in New South Wales have all had an impact on the price of food, electricity and petrol.

The other thing I'll agree with those opposite on is that, yes, interest rates have increased. The RBA has increased the cash rate by 0.5 per cent and we're now looking at 1.85 per cent. This will again have a real impact on the budgets of families. In my electorate of Reid, almost 30 per cent of households have a mortgage. So they are going to feel that interest rate increase. With rising costs of groceries, electricity, gas prices, childcare fees and mortgage repayments, families are absolutely feeling the pinch, something that those opposite have finally started to recognise.

I think where I differ from those opposite is that I think much of what we see happening at the moment has been a long time brewing. It is something that they oversaw for the last nine years. A decade without an energy policy means that we had an energy sector without the certainty to be able to invest in renewable energy, one of the cheapest forms of energy. Wage suppression was a deliberate strategy of the previous government, and it worked. It was one of the few things the previous government was able to achieve. They wanted to keep wages low. That means that the burden of increased prices falls most heavily on those on lowest incomes. Our teachers, nurses, aged-care workers and childcare workers are going to be feeling the brunt of rising costs. They have not seen a real wage increase in years.

The other challenge to this equation is the increasingly precarious nature of our job market. Job insecurity is now a hallmark of our job market. Again, that's something those opposite deliberately made part of their strategy. During the campaign, I had the privilege of meeting Ashley when I went out doorknocking. She spoke to me about the difficulty her family had in trying to plan long term for their future because her partner had worked at the same company for 27 years as a casual and had never been offered a permanent position. That meant that her family were unable to plan for the future and unable to save because they did not know what income he would be bringing in week to week. They've got two young kids and she was in tears describing the situation to me. Today, as I speak on this matter of public importance, I think about Ashley and her family. I want to say to Ashley: we have listened and we care about the challenges that you're going through.

While we can't fix a decade of mismanagement overnight, there are practical measures that we can take to reduce the burden on families. They're not getting to be short-term measures to win us an election like those opposite introduced. These are going to be long-term measures that are going to have a real impact on families' budgets—for example, making child care more affordable and making medicines cheaper. But, importantly, we are also taking steps to improve job security for all working Australians. When my parents came to this country more than four decades ago, they were able to find good, secure jobs in factories with good conditions and they were able to thrive here. But, as I think about their story, I wonder if it would have been possible if they had come to this country four decades later. I don't think it would have been possible at all. They wouldn't have been able to find those jobs in factories, they wouldn't have been able to have that job security and our family wouldn't have been able to thrive here. In part, that is because of decisions that governments have made, decisions that those opposite made.

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