Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Australian families are set to be $2,000 worse off this Christmas under this government, with higher power prices, higher mortgages and families paying more at the checkout. Prime Minister, under Labor's extreme industrial relations changes, inflation will rise, industrial disputes will increase and small business will be slugged with tens of thousands of dollars in new costs. Why is this government making a bad situation worse?

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

LBANESE (—) (): I thank the member for her question and also for using the Leader of the Opposition's favourite phrase. What is it? 'It's going to make a bad situation worse.' He acknowledges that after 10 years in office we inherited a bad situation. That's the starting point! I thought I heard the Leader of the Opposition use that phrase, and it's the question here. How on earth, having sat in the cabinet for three terms, do you become Leader of the Opposition and say, 'Gee, it's a bad situation Australia's in!'

The member is right: we did inherit a bad situation. What we inherited was a government that didn't have an economic plan for the nation or an energy plan—they had 22 energy policies and didn't deliver any. We inherited a situation where inflation was rising. Interest rates started to increase under them. They didn't have a plan to deal with skills development—during the pandemic they told everyone to leave the country and then wondered why they inherited skill shortages when the economy opened up again. All of these problems we have inherited.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business will cease interjecting.

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

Skill shortages—we are dealing with that through 180,000 free-fee TAFE places next year. Low wage growth—we're dealing with that with our secure jobs, better pay bill that they opposed. And somehow they have also stated clearly in the question that wages going up will be a bad thing for the economy. What we had, with a decade of low wage growth, was a handbrake on our economy. We want an economy that works for people, not the other way around. We make no apologies for that. We want to deal with cost-of-living issues by having cheaper child care and medicines, and by lifting wages as well. People's standard of living is based upon revenue and expenditure. If you increase their wages, they're better off. That's the whole idea, but those opposite are opposed to higher wages. Those opposite concede in the question that yes, indeed, we did inherit a bad situation from those opposite.