Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The tariff dispute our nation finds itself in with the United States keeps getting worse. Yesterday Australia Post announced it would immediately stop some postal services to the United States and Puerto Rico. This decision will have major economic impacts on so many small businesses right across Australia. Australia Post is our national postage service, and the Albanese Labor government must get answers on when this will be resolved.

As we all know, there are more tariff issues going on in the communications space. The Prime Minister gave an iron-clad guarantee that we would have an answer on this as soon as possible and that it was not up for negotiation when it came to the news bargaining incentive. We're still waiting. We're in the dark on the consultation paper, and this was promised early this year. This policy is meant to protect Australian content and ensure local media companies and journalists are paid for their work that big tech host online. This is another failure by the government. It has been 294 days since the United States President was elected. We now have a postal service that is disrupted, halted policies and businesses on edge. It begs the question: why hasn't the Prime Minister put Australians first and met with the President to discuss the tariff dispute which continues to impact our economy?