Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister: In the last week, the government has: re-announced changes to make medicines cheaper, that the coalition actually promised in April; celebrated a pension increase that occurred automatically due to skyrocketing inflation; and released a half-baked version of the coalition's plan to allow pensioners to work more days, which expires in just nine months time. With Australians facing a cost-of-living crisis now, why doesn't the Prime Minister have any new initiatives to provide cost-of-living relief before Christmas?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I do thank the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party for that question. I note the number of interviews that have been given by the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party where she has said, in response to the number of initiatives that the new government has taken, 'Why didn't they do it 100 days ago?' Why didn't they do it 100 days ago! We've got to have something to amuse ourselves when parliament's not sitting and we're not in here. We've got to have something to amuse ourselves with.

If only the Deputy Leader of the Opposition had been in a position to do something at one stage. If only! If only, in the April that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition refers to, she was in a position to do something. Or maybe in 2021, or 2020, or 2019, or 2018, or any of the other times that the member was sitting in the cabinet—in between, of course, that sabbatical that she took from being in the cabinet.

But what we did, of course, in the election campaign, was go to Perth and announce a decrease from $42.50 to $30 for pharmaceuticals on the PBS. And we didn't just announce it: we did it. We did it! We did it, and we've introduced the legislation here today. We promised cheaper child care, and that legislation will be here, of course, next week. Of course the policy that they announced during the election campaign was less than what we announced, and was about nine years too late. I find it beyond belief that there's no self-reflection at all in saying 'Why didn't you do things earlier' when you sat on these benches for nine years and watched the cost-of-living pressures rise at the same time as you were putting downward pressure on wages, at the same time as low wages were a key feature of the economic architecture.

The truth is that those on this side of the chamber now—the new government—are acting based upon the commitments that we made. Those opposite are lamenting the fact that they didn't do anything to alleviate cost-of-living pressures in their nine long years in office.