House debates

Monday, 5 September 2022

Private Members' Business

Cost of Living

10:49 am

Photo of Luke GoslingLuke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As you know, many Australians are doing it particularly tough right now. The costs of fuel, groceries, child care, utilities, housing and mortgages—everything—are going up, so many people rightly feel that they will be overwhelmed as household budgets get tighter and tighter.

Despite the claptrap we just heard from the member opposite, those opposite left us with many ticking time bombs. They pursued a deliberate strategy to suppress wage growth. That was for a decade, and they were proud of it. They said suppressing the wages of working people in this nation was actually part of their plan. That has led to the crisis that we're in. They did very little to diversify our economy and therefore left us very vulnerable to the shocks we saw when they mishandled the China relationship. China imposed bans on our exports, and that hurt a lot of Aussie producers and businesses.

Our government understands and has already begun work, after just over 100 days in government, to address some of these deep systemic problems, mostly the result of the ineptitude of those opposite. We must ensure that wages keep pace with the cost of living. The rewriting of history by some of those opposite is understandable, with them having lost the election and trying to explain it away, but the reality is that one of the big reasons that they were unsuccessful in the election is that the Australian people knew that those opposite were cooked and did not have a plan to address some of the big issues that we face as a nation.

In contrast, the Albanese government has a plan and we have committed to making child care more affordable for 97 per cent of families, which doesn't help our kids only. It helps parents get back into the workplace, meaning more money for families and a huge boost to productivity in our economy. It's also why we lifted the minimum wage in line with inflation so Aussies earning lower incomes aren't losing pay. Our Powering Australia plan will cut power bills for households as we do this important work of pivoting our economy towards renewables.

We've also committed to improving the affordability and uptake of electric vehicles, something that those opposite dismissed and derided as 'ending the weekend'. How ridiculous not to see where the trends are going in terms of affordability of electric vehicles and how that's going to help household budgets.

As far as fuel prices go, we have seen them rise significantly over the last decade. My constituents in Darwin, like many other regional Australians, are being gouged by the fuel retailers. Ninety-seven per cent of our refined fuel is imported. Renewable technology is obviously the way of the future, so why not invest in that and use what is very clearly to our advantage? I am running in my electorate a concerted campaign against the fuel retailers, because, even as the oil price did drop, they were taking too much in terms of profits. We'll continue to point out to them how unethical it is, how greedy it is and how it's not in the interests of our national economy to keep gouging Australians when it comes to fuel. We want Australians to pay less for their commute to work, whilst they are dropping the kids off at school or going away for the weekend, and all those things will not disappear just because their next car may have a battery in it.

Continuing to rely on foreign oil would punish Australians and their household budgets. We know that renewable technologies will take some time to be implemented, but our government, the Albanese government, is committed to looking forward not just towards this next term of parliament and the one after but towards the coming decades. We want to build an Australia with a lower cost of living and with higher living standards, especially for those who are on lower incomes and who are struggling to get by at the moment. Australians can count on the Albanese government to do just that.

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