Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is indeed an important topic. The motion is a little bit deficient. It's a random selection of facts, conveniently missing the context and things that the opposition prefer not to talk about or, indeed, are actively trying to make Australians forget. But cost-of-living pressures are the No. 1 focus of the government. People are doing it tough. I don't really take offence—it's the kind of stuff you expect from those opposite—but the silly stereotype we heard a couple of speakers ago, that somehow government members are not aware of this, is pretty offensive. I spent eight hours on Saturday, like I do many weekends, doing street stalls right across the electorate. I have another six hours booked in this Saturday. That's what good local MPs do, and there are good local MPs on both sides of the chamber, so let's cut the stereotype that somehow the government is out of touch.

Interest rates are rising, and Australians are doing it tough. There are energy price pressures, mostly for reasons beyond the former government's and this government's control, as the opposition well know. Inflationary pressures are impacting the price of food, goods and services, and we've had a decade of stagnating wages, but the cost of living has two aspects. Let's be clear. It's basic accounting: money out and money in. From my discussions on Saturday, I know that Australians are perfectly well aware of both sides of that equation. The government is taking action, though, on both fronts. We'll start with the money in, because the opposition don't like to talk about this as their record. One of the first actions we took as a government was to back a rise of 5.2 per cent to the minimum wage, helping 2.7 million Australians with a dollar an hour, as the Prime Minister said before the election. We backed a rise for aged-care workers, finally. The previous government weren't going to touch that little recommendation in the royal commission, were they? The Fair Work Commission is finalising the details now, and rightly so—around 15 per cent. We've introduced secure jobs, better pay laws, to help every worker be able to negotiate a better pay deal and get wages moving.

This contrasts profoundly with the decade of dysfunction, dithering and delay that Australians endured under the opposition, who bring this debate. Real wages went backwards under the Liberals before COVID. Here's one of those inconvenient facts that the motion could well have included. Real wages between 2013 and 2019 in this country went backwards, against the OECD trends. That's their record. But it was part of their deliberate economic management. The former finance minister Mathias Cormann admitted that. He certainly went off the talking points then, on Sky News. He said: 'Well, of course, low wages are a deliberate feature of our economic management.' That's their ideology. They actively backed cuts to penalty rates. Their record is trying to lower wages. I just want to make that clear. In a cost-of-living debate, that's one key part of the equation. What are people getting in? Are their wages going backwards? But the other side, of course, is the inflation challenge, and the motion calls for 'real action' on 'cost of living pressures'—full stop; that's the end. Well, that's exactly what the government's doing. You missed that bit out.

Inflation is the defining economic challenge of 2023, just as it was in 2022. But Australia is not alone in the developed world. We can't control Russia's illegal war in Ukraine. We can't control the recovery from the global supply-chain challenges arising from COVID, particularly in relation to China.

But what the government of Australia can control, should control and should have controlled are things that the government does. The opposition had more than 20 failed energy policies in their decade in office—I think it was 22, actually—and a lazy, inflationary economic approach to fiscal management. The March quarter of 2022 was the worst inflation record for a couple of decades. The previous government splashed cash around in every budget, whether it was for rorted grants programs—billions of dollars for stuff—or handouts, grants programs or debt-funded tax cuts. We heard one of the former speakers actually say: 'Oh, the government raised the price of petrol.' That was the former government's temporary rebate that ended—it expired, on their timetable—which was a cash splash before an election. Guess what? That's inflationary. They were the highest-taxing government in Australian history; the second-highest-taxing was John Howard's—inconvenient facts that the opposition don't like to acknowledge. You could have popped that in your motion.

But the government has a plan for responsible cost-of-living relief: for cheaper child care; for cheaper medicines; for direct energy relief, which the opposition voted no to—they actually voted no to taking the sting out of power price rises; for repairing supply-side constraints; for fee-free TAFE; for cleaner and cheaper energy; for the National Reconstruction Fund; for more affordable housing; and for responsible budget management, with spending restraint. The government returned 99 per cent of new revenue to the budget, taking pressure off inflation—in contrast to your spending-like-a-drunken-sailor record.

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