Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It's $7 in the Hunter. There you go. The member for Hunter probably knows. The fact is that people can't afford to go out to a cafe any more. If they want to purchase a meal at a pub, the price is through the roof. I know because I take my family to the pub.

Then we go into all the subsidies. What drives this 13th rate increase? It comes because inflation is out of control. And guess what? It's on this Labor government's watch. It was not happening under the coalition. It is happening under this Labor government. They need to take responsibility for continually giving out subsidies. We've now got a new subsidy for EVs—another $50 million. 'That's not going to hurt anybody!' Yes it will, because it comes out of taxpayer pockets.

The way this government spends money to make up for or to put a bandaid on what is a broken economy is appalling. It will only cost taxpayers more. It will only continue to see inflation rise. I actually feel a little sorry for the RBA and for its chair. These are the stories they have to keep coming out to tell the Australian people while trying not to annoy the current Labor government, which is where the responsibility needs to sit.

Then we've got things like policies, great policies, like the gun buyback—$15 billion, Member for Hunter! Where's that going to come from? Oh, the Australian taxpayer. One more time: a terrible policy that was just simply a repeat of 1996, when John Howard was doing the right thing. Here we have a government and a Prime Minister who have made a decision for gun buybacks because he wanted to cover over a massacre that should never have happened on his watch. The fact is this government is responsible. It needs to take responsibility. We will continue to work to make it take that responsibility seriously.

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