Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the speakers who have come before me, on both sides. The member for Perth mentioned the Constitution. I like to flick through it when I'm waiting for an actual relevant answer.

A n honourable member interjecting—

The same page, yes. There are some other parts of section 51 that you might like to hear. It says:

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution—

Apparently that doesn't have any meaning, but it does have meaning—

have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth—

Good government of the Commonwealth—it might be worth picking that part up and flicking through it every now and then because good government is what you are put here by the Australian people to do. We haven't had good government from this government, and that is a serious thing.

We've had many interjections through this debate, and I'll mention a few of them. We had the member for Higgins say, 'Why did you suppress real wages for a decade?' Sorry, I've misrepresented you. I said 'real wages', and you said 'wages'. We always leave the 'real' part out. The interjection was: 'Why did you suppress wages for a decade?'

When I was growing up, I remember watching Sesame Street. There was always the word of the day and the number of the day, and that's how I imagine the government members meet; there's a word of the day. It's quite clear that the words of the day—there are two of them—are 'misinformation' and 'disinformation'. You've all come in here and repeated them again and again, throughout this parliament. I remember when it was called 'fake news', but we've moved on to 'misinformation' and 'disinformation'. When you think about those words, they're a great way to say, 'I'm not listening to you; I'm not listening.' We know why you're saying that, in these last five weeks before the referendum. 'I'm not listening.' You talk about listening, but you don't actually do it.

In this motion, I'd like to take the points that were made by the member for Parramatta, who is a friend of mine on the House economics committee. He is a distinguished economist, but I think Google let you down today. You were quite quick to jump to your feet to correct the shadow Treasurer on his use of a particular number. If you were to open up Google on your laptop or your phone, I'd urge you to go a media release dated 2 August 2023, with the heading 'Employee households see biggest rise in living costs'. Under the subheading 'Employee households' it says:

Living costs for employee households recorded the largest annual rise of all household types, at 9.6 per cent.

So it's not a number that the shadow Treasurer has just plucked from thin air. It has real consequences.

I'd like to go to the contributions by my friends the member for Hughes and the member for Casey. They talked about the real consequences for people. The words of the day today aren't misinformation and disinformation; the word of the day is 'real'. It's about what real Australians are facing out in the real world, not here. What they're facing is a 15.7 per cent increase in electricity prices. They were promised a cut of $275. That's never the number of the day. It's never the word of the day, either. It doesn't appear in the Sesame Street briefing that you get in the morning. Then we have gas prices going up sharply, almost 14 per cent in the latest data, and from the good state of Victoria, like the member for Chisholm—enjoy your gas at record prices, because it won't be there in the future, thanks to our Premier. We've had milk and bread prices going up by 10 per cent or more, and Australians are paying. People are noticing their insurance bills, when they open them, are at astronomical prices.

The worst thing of all, which we don't hear about from the members opposite, is the interest payments on mortgages. An average mortgage in a city area of $750,000 area sees that family pay $22,000 more a year. When you look at the average wages that people get, that is just off the chart. People have to make choices, and they have to make compromises.

We're not here to politicise the horrible scourge of suicide in this country. We're not here to do that; none of us are, on either side. I would never accuse you of doing that. That's not what we're doing. But we all have food banks in our electorates, and I challenge any of you to say they aren't seeing more people queueing up than before. I challenge any of you to say that. I've got six in my electorate, and the queues are out the door. Those people are doing it tougher than they ever have. They're relying on you, and you're letting them down.

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