Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. In the budget the government had an opportunity to outline a plan to provide relief for families from the cost-of-living crisis. The government also had an opportunity to implement your promise to Australians to reduce their power prices by $275, and yet the government did nothing. If the government does have a plan to help Australians, why hasn't it been announced by now? Why, after six months, has this Prime Minister left Australian families and businesses waiting?

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

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. He speaks about six months in office and, indeed, we have been in government for six months. Six months ago what we inherited was the largest deficit since the Second World War and $1 trillion of debt with little to show for it. We inherited sluggish economic growth and an economy that was not growing like it used to. We inherited productivity going backwards. We inherited declining business investment, and we inherited widespread skills shortages which were holding businesses back. We inherited flatlining wages—many Australians hadn't received a decent pay rise in almost a decade, in spite of working longer hours and working harder—and more Australians in insecure work than ever before.

We framed a budget by the Treasurer of Australia doing the hard work through the ERC process to make sure that we framed a budget that did not put further pressure on inflation. Because of what is happening globally, we were responsible, and that's why we put 99 per cent over two years of the revenue gains that had been made, in part because of the inflated prices of our resources, straight into the bottom line. But we made room as well to assist with the cost-of-living pressures. We made room to deliver on our childcare commitments, the largest on-budget commitment that we've made that will help more than a million Australian families. We made room to have the first decrease in the cost of medicines since a former Labor government introduced the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—from $42.50 down to $30. We made room to create 180,000 fee-free TAFE places to provide support for people wanting to get better education and training.

Importantly, as well, we took action in our first six months to increase the inputs that are called wages—something that those opposite had a deliberate strategy of keeping low over their decade in office. We put forward a proposition, as one of our first acts, for people on the minimum wage not to go backwards, and, indeed, the Fair Work Commission listened. That 5.2 per cent increase—that dollar coin that I held up day after day during the election campaign—that was going to wreck the economy, that was reckless according to those opposite, well, it wasn't reckless; it was responsible.