Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) | Hansard source

I take the interjection from across the floor: 'You must have a big mortgage.' Yes, people do. And I'm sure, to the member who made the interjection, somebody has a mortgage like that in your seat and you make a joke out of it—through you, Deputy Chair. These people are real, yet those opposite are talking about that. We're talking about that in our electorates. Where do you find an extra $22,000 a year when you are on an average income in my electorate of $65,000 a year before tax? The reality is you have to find a second job to cover your mortgage, and that is exactly what people are doing. That is exactly what people are facing.

Then you look at the groceries. I'm sure everyone in the chamber will be interested to know I do the shopping in my household. I enjoy it. I love it. I love comparing prices. I love to see what is on the shelf. I enjoy cooking. So every fortnight I prepare the list for the fortnight, do the meal plan for the budget, just like many people across Australia. Over the past 18 months to two years, my bill has gone up by at least 30 per cent. So if my bill has gone up 30 per cent—and we are not extravagant; we still have tuna bake Thursdays—it means everybody else's bill has gone up 30 per cent, but have we heard that from across the floor? No. Everything is rosy. There is not that cost-of-living crisis in the supermarkets. And what are the government going to do now? They are going to impose a biosecurity tax on our farmers. If you don't know what that is, it is a biosecurity tax on our farmers for what we are importing from other countries. We are punishing our farmers for what people overseas are sending here. Well, guess what's going to happen: you're going to pay more, because the farmers have no option but to pass that tax on to the consumer. If you thought it was bad now, with 30 per cent more on your grocery bill, wait until this tax is introduced and passed on to you—passed on to the mums and dads in regional and rural Australia. It is tough enough.

Then I move on to the cost of electricity. There's complete silence from the other side. Not one member did I hear. What I have heard is that your bills are lower, apparently—

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