Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the 1950s a significant change took place in medicine. The advent of evidence based medicine saw that field move from an approach which had previously prized grey-bearded experts towards a more scientific and critical approach, which looked to test new treatments. Streptomycin, the polio vaccine and other treatments were evaluated using randomised trials. This was a significant step forward for medicine, saving thousands of lives. Treatments which were previously thought to be effective turned out, when subjected to a rigorous control, to be ineffective. Treatments which had been thought to be long shots turned out to save lives.

The shift towards evidence based medicine has marked one of the most crucial changes within medicine over the course of recent centuries. Right now, public policy is going through the same transition. Effectively, what we're trying to do with a randomised trial is to identify the counterfactual—what would have happened if the treatment hadn't been put in place. You can think of this a bit like Gwyneth Paltrow from Sliding Doors. In that movie, we get to see both of the alternatives—what happens when she catches the train and what happens when she doesn't. But real life isn't like that. We only get to see one pathway through, and, in evaluating new medicines or evaluating new policies, it's critical to have in our minds what would have happened if the policy hadn't been delivered.

Randomised trials assign people to the treatment and control groups through the toss of a coin. That approach ensures the two groups are identical when you have a large sample on both the observables and the unobservables. I've spent much of my career as an economist using natural experiment approaches, trying to tease out a treatment group and a control group using differences in state variation, using a regression discontinuity or using instrumental variables. But what we're trying to do in each of those instances is to benchmark against a randomised trial to see what would have happened if we'd been able to put a randomised trial in place.

In many instances in public policy, we now do have those randomised trials. When New South Wales was facing the question in the late 1990s as to whether to establish drug courts, it set up just such a randomised trial. That trial assigned people randomly to go through either a drug court with its specialist drug addiction treatment programs or the traditional criminal justice process. The evaluation found that drug courts passed a cost-benefit test. Those offenders assigned to the drug court were less likely to re-offend subsequently. You didn't have to place any weight on the wellbeing of drug offenders. You just had to look at the benefits to the community. Randomised trials can help cut through ideology in order to ascertain what works and build up that evidence base.

We've seen a suite of randomised trials put in place in educational interventions. I acknowledge the work of Richard Holden and others at the University of New South Wales, evaluating what happens when culturally appropriate questions are placed on tests. For example, if students are able to think in terms of the Parkes telescope—a local reference—rather than the Sydney Town Hall, they turn out to do better on the same questions. I see the member for Bass nodding. Her experience as a teacher reflects the understanding that it isn't simply about testing students on an arbitrary set of facts; it's also about making those questions culturally appropriate. That randomised trial conducted by the UNSW team provides insights that are going to be valuable in education.

In the United States we've seen the advent of randomised trials looking at what happens with high-quality housing programs. The Moving to Opportunity study provided housing vouchers for people in high-poverty neighbourhoods to move to low-poverty areas. It found a significant improvement in fields such as mental health and particularly a significant benefit to children whose families moved when they were very young.

In Australia, we've had a randomised trial of high-impact case management for long-term homeless people. The Journey to Social Inclusion evaluation conducted by Sacred Heart Mission in Victoria showed how difficult it is to make an impact on the lives of the most vulnerable. It found extremely low employment rates in both the treatment and the control group—a reminder not that we should give up on these challenges but that they are hard, and we need to do more in order to establish efficacy of programs intended to help the long-term homeless.

Increasingly, systems are being put in place in order to conduct more randomised trials. Our government established the Australian Centre for Evaluation within Treasury in order to conduct more rigorous experiments right across the policy spectrum. We understand that taxpayer dollars are provided in a sacred trust to governments, and that it is our obligation to do with those dollars the very best that we can. The Australian Centre for Evaluation has worked with the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, the Department of Social Services and other agencies in order to build the evidence base. They produced a recent report, Strengthening evaluation in the Australian government 2026-2030, which turns that intellectual case into a set of operating instructions right across the Commonwealth.

The Australian Centre for Evaluation, led by Eleanor Williams, has conducted a scan of all of the available randomised trials within Australian public policy going back to the 1970s. That evaluation, that scan, has been important in terms of identifying what evidence is there and what more could be added. The Australian Centre for Evaluation has also ensured that they are using their own techniques, evaluating their own education programs, their own training programs, through randomised trials. I commend them for the work that they're doing in order to bring a greater sense of rigour.

Sometimes randomised trials can be testing significant programs such as drug courts or housing vouchers to move to low-poverty neighbourhoods, but sometimes they can also be looking at effective tweaks. The BETA behavioural insights unit within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has experimented with trials that simply inform those doctors who are superprescribers of antibiotics that their propensity to prescribe antibiotics is higher than average. That randomised trial has seen a significant decrease in the propensity of doctors to overprescribe—a straightforward tweak followed up through administrative data, which had a real impact in saving money for taxpayers and in reducing antimicrobial resistance.

This illustrates the point that randomised trials can also improve democratic accountability. Philosopher Ana Tanasoca and I have written about the value of randomised trials in strengthening democracy. At a time when democracy is under strain from populist forces around the world, it is important that governments are able to show to taxpayers that we are using the very best available evidence. One way in which we're able to do that through randomised trials is by showing how cleanly we are comparing the treatment and control groups. Randomised trials are an important way of systematising evidence. At a time when there has been a reproducibility crisis within a whole lot of fields of social science, it's absolutely vital that we are able to show clearly how the evidence is being built.

I acknowledge in the chamber the member for Banks, Zhi Soon, who spent considerable professional time before he entered parliament working on randomised trials and other forms of rigorous evaluation. He brings to this place a rigour of thought which is reflected in the work the Australian Centre for Evaluation is doing. I acknowledge, too, the leadership role that the Australian Centre for Evaluation has played through the OECD. They helped the OECD convene a workshop last year on randomised trials and other rigorous evaluations, which led to a recent policy paper, Unleashing the policy potential of rigorous impact evaluation and randomised trials.

Bringing together the expertise of people like David Halpern from the UK has been critical in order to build the rigour and the international evidence sharing. The Wellcome Trust, the European Economic and Social Research Council and other funding bodies are now supporting work in order to build more rigorous evidence and to distil the evidence that exists. In the UK the What Works Network, through centres such as the Education Endowment Foundation, ensures that policymakers have at their fingertips the best available evidence. The Education Endowment Foundation has conducted more than 200 randomised trials, and about half of all pupils in British schools have been part of a randomised trial conducted by the Education Endowment Foundation. That rigour is not only helping education policymakers; it's also helping principals and teachers themselves, who are able to turn to the Education Endowment Foundation site and see presented in very straightforward terms what works and what doesn't, how big the impacts are, in months of learning, and how much the program costs. In this way they can make a very scientific comparison of what's available.

I also commend the Paul Ramsay Foundation, whose experimental grants round funded to the tune of $2.1 million seven different randomised trials, which were aiming to test what works in social policy at a modest cost. This is an example—as the Arnold Foundation in the UK and Jon Baron and others have shown—of the power of low-cost evaluations. There were more than 100 non-profit organisations that stepped forward to apply for the Paul Ramsay Foundation's funding to support experimental programs. They recognise the value of having rigorous evidence in order to support policy programs.

We should hold fast to our passion for tackling big policy challenges, but we should hold lightly to any particular solution. We should be willing to acknowledge, just as those researchers who are trying to find a cure for cancer do, that programs that look good in the lab may not work in the field, and we should be open to moving on to other solutions. If you take 10 medical drugs coming out of the lab, only one of them, on average, will make it through three phases of clinical trials and into market. So, too, in the area of social policy, we should recognise that much of what we value will not necessarily have the impact that we intend it to have. The rigour that the Australian Centre for Evaluation brings is important in terms of building the policy case.

Alongside this, we need to do a better job of building systematic reviews. Rather than making decisions based on a single study, we should be drawing together all of the available evidence, weighting more highly the higher quality evidence and bringing out what health researcher Julian Elliott has called 'living evidence reviews'. Living evidence reviews came out of COVID, with the notion that you needed to continuously update the evidence. The Campbell Collaboration in social science and the Cochrane Collaboration within medicine have done a very good job of producing systematic reviews, but we now need to make them continuously updated so policymakers and practitioners can immediately reach out and find out what is the best evidence on any particular topic that they're engaged in. Better distillation of the evidence and better creation of new evidence will help to build the case for better economic and social reform.

Our government is committed to evidence based policy. You can see that in the record number of randomised trials we're putting in place and in the rigour with which we are training public servants through the evaluation profession. I commend all of those public servants who've engaged in the Australian Centre for Evaluation's evaluation training, which is raising the quality of evaluation understanding right across the Public Service and better serving the Australian people. With rigour and a 'try, test, learn' approach, we can better serve the Australian people.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—One of the most damaging examples is Labor's decision to slash NDIS provider travel reimbursements by half. Under these changes, providers' capacities to travel to clients in regional and remote areas have been severely reduced, regardless of distance. For communities spread across vast geographic areas, like my electorate of Capricornia, this is not a minor budget adjustment. It is a direct threat to access to essential care. In Central Queensland, people with disability often rely on visiting allied health professionals. These changes make it harder, not easier, for providers to service regional communities. It can mean the difference between accessing care like those who live in cities or going without altogether.

Changes to the NDIS under the Albanese Labor government are having serious and deeply concerning consequences, particularly because of the government's failure to properly understand, anticipate or manage the unintended impacts of its poor decisions. Calls to my office include NDIS cases where participants have had their funding reduced by more than 50 per cent. Essential therapies have been removed, support hours have been slashed and assistive technology has been delayed or denied. Families are being forced to fight simply to maintain the level of care that was previously assessed as reasonable and necessary. Bureaucrats in Canberra are redefining eligibility and supports while participants on the ground are left scrambling to appeal decisions that directly affect their health, safety and quality of life. In some cases, we are advocating for participants whose medical status means that a loss of support is not merely inconvenient; it is potentially life-threatening. No family should have to go into battle with the system to secure the basic supports that keep their loved ones safe.

Sustainable reform of the NDIS is essential. The coalition has always supported measures to ensure the long-term viability of the scheme. Reform must be careful, transparent and guided by genuine consultation, not rushed adjustments that leave vulnerable Australians bearing the risk of unintended consequences. When the NDIS was created, it was built on a promise that Australians living with disability would have certainty, dignity and choice. Under this government, that certainty is eroding. Participants deserve clarity, and families deserve stability. The government must urgently address the very real harm being caused by its poorly executed changes to the NDIS.

In regional towns like Clermont, the significant shortfall of aged-care housing marks a critical failure of the Albanese Labor government to support rural Queenslanders. Clermont is far more than a small rural town of 3,000 people. It's a powerhouse for agriculture, mining and tourism. It helps build this nation's prosperity. Clermont is facing a worsening aged-care shortfall, while the Queensland Health-run Montcler facility provides high-care beds, the closure of intermediate- and low-care residential options, including the former Clermont Nursing Home, has created a systematic gap in the provision of aged-care services. Seniors who have worked their entire lives in this community are now being forced to move away from family, friends and support networks simply because appropriate facilities do not exist locally.

Community projections indicate the region will require more than 180 additional aged-care places by 2030 to meet demand. Yet, despite repeated representations, clear evidence of need and a rollout-ready solution, this government has failed to act. Labor even rejected funding for a much-needed seniors' living facility under the regional Precincts and Partnerships Program. At a time when Clermont is crying out for aged-care accommodation and independent living options, this government said no. The Clermont Monash Lodge revitalisation initiative is ready to go. It would deliver seniors' accommodation, ease housing pressure for younger families and support the town's recovery following recent floods. It would strengthen the community's long-term sustainability. It is exactly the kind of practical regional project that should be prioritised.

I have written to the Prime Minister and I have met with the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors. I have put forward the case clearly and constructively. The response has been silence. This government is quick to announce billions in metropolitan infrastructure and inner city projects. But when it comes to core services in regional Queensland—doctors, aged care or housing for seniors—the cupboard is bare.

Seniors who built a life in Clermont should not have to leave in their final years because the Albanese Labor government failed to provide funding for essential infrastructure so they could remain in their community. The coalition fought hard during the Senate inquiry into aged-care reforms to secure hardship provisions, grandfathering arrangements and caps on contributions to protect older Australians. We stood up to ensure dignity and fairness remained at the centre of the system. The wealth of this nation is built from towns like Clermont. The Albanese government must stop taking regional communities for granted. Towns like Clermont deserve better than this government's indifference.

Central Queensland has also been dealt another blow with Labor's decision to axe $23 million in funding for the Rocky Sports Club project, funding that was approved by the former coalition government in 2020. This project supports 129 sports clubs and community groups and would have delivered jobs, vital community infrastructure and long-term economic benefits for Rockhampton and the wider region—especially with Rockhampton being a potential Olympic city. Instead, after years of delay and false hopes, Labor walked away from the project entirely. This decision speaks volumes about Labor's priorities. A project that required a simple variation to proceed—a project that would have created jobs and strengthened community participation—was simply discarded.

It does not stop there. Labor's war on agriculture, its attacks on the resources sector and its anti-small-business agenda have made it harder for industries in Capricornia to thrive. Farmers tell me they are struggling with rising costs, with fuel and fertiliser prices at record highs. This is not just a problem for farmers; it's a problem for every Australian who relies on affordable food, secure supply chains and a strong regional economy.

Vital roads in my electorate, like the Bruce Highway and the Peak Downs Highway, have been left to crumble due to funding cuts. While lives continue to be lost, Labor continues to claim that regional Australians are better off. While all of this regional and rural neglect is happening, the Albanese Labor government would win a winter Olympic gold medal for spending; it's the highest spending government outside of a pandemic in 40 years.

After nearly four years of Labor, Australians are paying more for everything. Insurance is up 39 per cent, energy is up 38 per cent, rent is up 22 per cent, health costs are up 18 per cent, education is up 17 per cent and food is up 16 per cent. These are not luxuries; these are essentials. What makes this even more concerning is that Australia's inflation rate is now higher than many comparable economies. Government spending is now growing at four times the rate of the growth of the economy. Debt is projected to reach $1.2 trillion. Since coming into office, Labor has added $100 billion to the national debt. Spending is now $160 billion higher than when Labor came to power, equivalent to around $16,000 for every Australian household. All of this is occurring while the Commonwealth is collecting extraordinary levels of revenue. In 2024-25 alone, the government raised $717 billion in receipts—25.9 per cent of GDP, the highest level in 25 years. Revenue is not the problem; spending is.

The consequences are being felt through higher interest rates. In February the Reserve Bank raised rates by 25 basis points to 3.85 per cent. Every rate rise hits mortgage holders, renters and small businesses. Young Australians have been locked out of the housing market, families have been forced to delay major life decisions and future generations are being saddled with debt they did not choose.

These appropriation bills may be technical in nature, but they reflect a deeper and more troubling pattern. This is a government that believes more spending is always the answer, regardless of the economic or regional consequences. The opposition will not oppose these bills, but we will continue to hold the government to account. Australians deserve fiscal responsibility, measured budgeting and leadership that understands that proper fiscal management, focused on the most important priorities, is not optional in an inflationary environment; it is essential. When Labor spends, Australians pay. It's time for leadership that puts Australians first.

Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I feel an affinity for the member for Capricornia, myself coming from the country originally. I'm a Broken Hill boy; it's where I spent many years. The member representing the great city of Broken Hill is here as well. While I share an affinity on a personal and perhaps a geographical level, I think there might be a philosophical divergence in Australian politics that we haven't seen for a long time. Some of the comments made in that speech, I think, really outline what that philosophical difference is.

I feel like I woke up in an alternate universe where the member for Goldstein is somehow the alternative Treasurer of this country. He is somebody who I'm not sure would fit in particularly well in the rural electorates that many of you here represent, where I come from, and I think he would struggle in the outer metropolitan electorate that I represent today. I feel like there is a bit of an alternate universe where people on the other side see the member for Goldstein as having some economic answers. Maybe it is that there is this philosophical difference in Australian politics. I think we've really seen a divergence in that over the last 10 years or perhaps a little bit more.

With the member for Goldstein I think we have one of the most radical, if not the most radical, assistant Treasurers when it comes to their personal philosophy. I sort of understand that philosophy. And I do want to use this speech to talk a little bit about that, because where the government spends its money is the best indication of what the government's values actually are. So this is a good opportunity to talk about values, talk about philosophy and talk about the sorts of values that I did learn growing up in Broken Hill—where you look after your community, where you look after your mate and where you work hard and expect a return on that work. In Broken Hill you've always got to remember that you are fighting as a community. You're fighting for the person next to you, and you don't want to leave that community behind. They would find the sort of philosophy that the member for Goldstein, the shadow Treasurer, professes to be a very sterile ideology.

I think that where the government spends its money is really an indication of what that philosophy is. That's why I think where the government prioritises its spending in housing, energy, training, health—and mental health particularly—and infrastructure really brings to my mind that saying that you should run a country the same way that you run a business. I've also run a business. I started off as a contract musterer around Broken Hill—not the biggest business—where I had a bike, a ute, a pack of dogs and the will to win. The most important thing that you need in any business is the will to win. From there we moved to the city, when we had a little baby, and I ended up running a construction company. I really learnt some things along the way, and I want to talk about that in a second.

One thing I learnt is that there are two ways to run a business: you can strip the profits out, run the business into the ground, put off the investment and put off the maintenance; or you can invest in your plant and your people. The way that the Liberal Party and the National Party used to run their political philosophy was that they used to invest in the plant and they used to invest in their people. That is where I think we are now seeing a divergence. The member for Goldstein, the shadow Treasurer, has a fundamental philosophy which I'll get into in a second. I do understand it; I do get it. Ultimately that philosophy is about neglecting to invest in your plant, your people, your housing, your energy, your training, your infrastructure, your health system and the mental health of your people. That's why this next election is really going to be about that big difference in philosophical approaches.

I went from contract mustering to running a construction company, but there was something that happened in between. This is where I get the member for Goldstein. I'd imagine the National Party would probably not sign up to his economic philosophy, being the agrarian socialists that I think many of you still are. There was a bit of time there between contract mustering and running a construction company where I got to hone my own political philosophy. We went when we had a baby—my partner wasn't going to live in the outback of New South Wales, so we moved to Tenterfield, where I worked in a service station. I was flipping burgers and serving petrol in my early 30s. My partner gave me a book on getting from nought to $5 million in five years. I thought: 'Geez, this book's a heap of rubbish. It's one of these get-rich-quick books.' By the time I read it, I was hooked because it wasn't about getting rich; it was about this philosophy of taking personal responsibility for your own decisions and realising that the choices you make have consequences. It said that if you change the way you look at the world, you can change your environment and you can take that responsibility. I would say it rounded out a political philosophy I developed through the Labor Party, which is a bit more about that collective action—that governments can solve all the problems. Sometimes that's right, and sometimes that's not right. Anyway, that book began a journey for me where I ended up reading about 160 or so of those business books. I wanted to run my own business, and fundamentally what I wanted to do with that business was help businesses teach their workers financial responsibility and some of those things I had learned.

I get where the member for Goldstein is coming from in his philosophy. He has this aggressively individualist approach to people making choices in their own lives to control their own destiny, and says government shouldn't get involved in that. I get that; I understand where he's coming from. But there's a point at which something like that becomes utterly ideological and not founded in reality, and there's a point where that becomes un-useful to the rest of society.

On superannuation, this week the government is building on its superannuation policy, which is very much a Labor Party policy. In those books I was reading, one of the philosophies was that you pay yourself first: you put 10 per cent of your income and you pay yourself first no matter what, because over time you can build up that pool of savings from just a pile of money—which can be there for security if you need it—to a pile of assets, effectively, that you can invest to create a passive income. I understand that argument that you should pay yourself first. But the reality is that life gets in the way. If it wasn't for a compulsory superannuation system that took 10 per cent and put that 10 per cent away for workers, there wouldn't be $4.3 trillion worth of national savings for people to retire on. There would be people retiring into poverty, just as there was prior to superannuation.

In politics you have to be pragmatic. The ideological purity doesn't work. It didn't work for the Labor Party in the 1950s and 1960s, and it's not working for the Liberal and National parties today. I'm sure there are sensible people in those parties. I have a personal affinity for people from the bush; they reside mainly in the National Party. I say to them: for the sake of the country, encourage your colleagues—particularly the shadow Treasurer—to drop this ideological obsession with this personal free market approach to economics. As attractive as it might look on paper, it would not work to the extent where you would end up with the pool of savings that we have for superannuation—and it has not worked over the last 30 or so years that prime ministers such as John Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison have followed the approach of the government withdrawing itself from providing essential services like housing and energy.

There are probably two things that I really want to come to this place to prosecute. There are two economic arguments that I want to come to this place to prosecute, and those are cheap public housing and cheap public energy. In many ways, that was the postwar economic miracle, the economic recipe of Australia—cheap public housing and cheap public energy. There was cheap public housing not just for people that desperately needed it but for railway workers, for meat workers, for teachers, for car workers.

In fact, I like to shock people a little bit by saying that one of my economic role models was Thomas Playford, who was the Premier of South Australia and Australia's longest-serving premier, who served from the 1940s to the 1970s. He was a Liberal premier who built the South Australian Housing Trust and who put into the charter of the South Australian Housing Trust that it would aid in the economic development of the state. At one point, the high point in Australia, something like 40 per cent of every rental in South Australia was for public housing for car workers. That's how they built the car industry. It wasn't just the reduction in tariffs that destroyed the car industry; it was the cost of housing going up, meaning that wages had to go up. Actually, that didn't help business in the end. The whole idea about public housing was that you could take the pressure off wages. You could then attract international manufacturing companies like the car industry to South Australia and Australia.

But it wasn't just Liberal Party premiers, of course; it was the philosophy at the time. This is what I'm trying to say. There used to be this sort of agreement between Labor and Liberal that the government had a role to play in the economy for the good of the economy, not just out of the goodness of our hearts but because it was actually the economically sensible thing to do. So it was with energy. We built great public energy assets in this country. Just to surprise people, I don't just go around quoting premiers of Australia from ancient history; I like to quote Peter Dutton, somebody who's been in the news a bit lately, in a certain report. Amongst all of the things Peter Dutton said that I would disagree with, I thought he summed up the importance of energy perfectly when he said that energy is not just part of the economy; energy is the economy. It absolutely is the economy.

Australia's postwar economic miracle was built on those two foundations: cheap public housing and cheap public energy, but the ideological obsession that the opposition has had with withdrawing itself from the market has seen energy infrastructure privatised, corporatised and ultimately wither away to nothing. Coal-fired power stations closed all around the place, but they weren't replaced. What I don't get is this ideological obsession against renewable energy. I just don't get it, because nobody's building coal-fired power stations any more. In fact, I think something like $3 million went into a study to build a coal-fired power station in Collinsville, but they didn't even finish the study, let alone the coal-fired power station. No-one's going to build a coal-fired power station anymore.

The opposition want to dangle out there a change to our energy policy to allow nuclear energy. Who's going to do that? The Australian people aren't going to let you spend $600 billion doing it. I don't think there's any private enterprise lining up to do it. Doesn't this sound sensible? Renewable energy firmed by gas and batteries. Doesn't that actually sound sensible to those in the opposition? Somehow there is this ideological obsession that you can't have this approach; you need the most expensive approach of coal and nuclear. If you believe in coal and nuclear, therefore you don't believe in climate change, somehow. The Prime Minister talked about that. Those are exactly his words from the last election. That's when I thought that he was really nailing it, with the way he summed it up. Our energy future is renewable energy firmed by gas and batteries, yet the opposition has withdrawn from the field.

I rise in support of these bills because the best indication of the values of a government is how it spends its money. I urge you to support it.

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

It was very refreshing to hear the member the Forde and his arguments throughout that discourse, particularly that he sees reward for effort as a noble and good thing and that energy is the economy. Those are just two pieces that I took out of his speech. They're very true, and there is a reason we are not into all renewables—because it is not sound policy, as we are discovering with electricity bills around Australia. Every person who gets an electricity bill knows that it is bad policy. Anyway, that's a conversation I will take up at another time. It was very good to hear from you though.

I want to speak about how, when Labor spends, we pay. The biggest collapse in living standards in the developed world—that is a statement no Australian is proud of right now. It comes because Labor has an addiction to spending which is driving up the cost of living. We have a $1.2 trillion debt bomb that future generations—our children, our grandchildren—will be paying for. Who knows how long it will take to come down? It will certainly be a lot longer if Labor stays in power.

Australians are paying more for their mortgages. They're paying more, as we've already discussed, for their power bills and for their groceries. Every time you go through the checkout, every Australian knows, it is so expensive. You can almost see it on people's faces. Let alone rents, which seem to rise at 10 per cent levels on a very regular basis. Australians will pay the price tomorrow as Labor locks in decades of deficits and intergenerational debt.

The Reserve Bank of Australia forecasts the worst medium-term economic growth ever. Economists warn that Australians' living standards will continue to erode—this is not good news—putting more pressure on the federal government's deteriorating budget. The latest central bank forecasts show that the economy is expected to grow just 1.6 per cent over the year to June 2028.

Mortgages are up by an average of $1,800 a month after 14 rate rises since Labor came to office. Mortgage holders have paid at least a $23,000 increase in interest on their mortgages since Labor came to office. Households are paying 16 per cent more for food, 18 per cent more for health, 22 per cent more for rents, 39 per cent more for insurance and nearly 40 per cent more for electricity. So much for $275 in savings!

Households have burnt through all the fat they may have had in their budgets. It has been taken up by rate rises and the rising cost of living. This is tellingly obvious at the supermarket checkout. Families are making hard decisions about how to keep their budgets sustainable, cutting back on anything extra for kids—music lessons, sport and other extracurricular activities. Going out for a meal—that has gone through the roof—if you can find a restaurant still open. And that's if families can continue to service their mortgage or rental property at all.

In my electorate of Mallee, emergency food relief charities are experiencing unprecedented demand, and even then I'm having to fight for them to get their funding reinstated, such as for the Horsham Christian Emergency Food Centre and the Stawell Interchurch Council Cottage, as Labor, as they're want to do, apply a desktop modelling approach and fail to understand the distances between towns in my electorate, thereby cutting funding. Fortunately, the minister has heard my cries. I have met with her, and she has reinstated partial funding for those services. It's not enough in a cost-of-living crisis, when people are hurting day after day.

Spending in the current budget—and, I predict, in the upcoming May budget—is based on heroic assumptions, as former Treasury assistant secretary David Pearl wrote on Saturday 28 February. Mr Pearl writes, accurately:

… we are … in a long-term economic decline … the largest drop in living standards of any OECD country since the … pandemic … little real wages growth since 2011 and labour productivity stuck at its 2015 year level.

That's over 10 years ago. The first false assumption Mr Pearl calls out in his expose of what he calls 'economic fantasies and delusions' is that cutting carbon dioxide emissions will somehow improve productivity. He writes:

… too many of us refuse to accept—or even consider as a remote possibility—that any policy of rapidly cutting carbon dioxide emissions must necessarily lower growth, hurt productivity and lower living standards (while having no effect on the climate, absent similar commitments from the big economic powers). Not by a little bit but, as its whole-of-economy ill-effects compound across time, by a great deal.

He continues:

In the 1990s, this growth trade-off was considered a truism by conventional economists, who opposed heavily front-loaded emissions cuts for that reason.

Yet today Canberra's conventional wisdom is that emissions cuts not only carry no costs but—in the words of Productivity Commission chairwoman Danielle Woods—are an economic prize, relying on the fantasy that wind and solar are the cheapest form of power.

I say 'Hear, hear!' Those opposite should be uncomfortable in their seats, especially those that like to preach about being on the right side of history. Mr Powell says of the second delusion about our public finances:

… too few of us are prepared to admit that the budget's forward estimates and projections are a complete fiction. Not unreliable and inaccurate, as critics typically maintain, but completely divorced from reality. They show that future deficits will remain small in economic terms and virtually disappear by 2035-36, with net debt remaining stable at 20 per cent of GDP—a result that virtually every other developed economy would kill for. But the assumptions they rely on are deeply flawed.

They assume that across the next decade, federal spending will remain stable at close to 27 per cent of GDP—despite the expected rapid growth in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, our interest bill and other programs—because, get this, the cost of the public service is assumed to fall significantly.

As the Parliamentary Budget Office has found, if we are more realistic about the latter, spending could be underestimated by as much as 3 per cent of GDP, resulting in much higher deficits and debts.

Thirdly, Mr Pearl rightly says:

Our third delusion is our inability to accept the world has changed fundamentally during the past five years.

Labor have been in government for four of those.

Events in the Middle East on the weekend have only underscored that comment. I suspect the article was submitted before the bombs fell on the ayatollah in Iran. Mr Pearl writes:

We have seen a return of intense great-power rivalry, reflected in rising military tensions, the fracturing of the world's trading and financial systems, and the collapse in global support for net zero. What we had of a rules-based order (the concept was always overstated by the Davos mob) is under genuine threat, with serious implications for small, trading economies such as Australia.

It is high time the emperor was called out for wearing no clothes. It's time for the delusions to end and for the Albanese Labor government to stop the fiction and be truthful with the Australian people in the May budget.

Labor's spending has blown out to 27 per cent of GDP, the highest level outside of a recession in nearly 40 years. Former RBA governor Philip Lowe made clear that inflation has lasted longer in Australia because of Labor's spending spree. IFM Investors' chief economist, Alex Joiner, said that the fiscal guardrails have come off.

Instead of tackling spending, Labor's answer is to increase taxes on your super, your savings, your housing and your small business. Every minute, we are paying $50,000— or $72 million a day—just on interest on Labor's debt. Every dollar that pays interest is a dollar we can't spend on Medicare, schools, hospitals, NDIS, aged care or tax relief. We cannot put unsustainable spending on the national credit card for our kids to pay back tomorrow through Labor's higher taxes.

Anne Urquhart (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of this package of appropriation bills: the Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2025-2026 and related bills. These bills give effect to decisions outlined in the 2025-26 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which the Albanese Labor government delivered at the end of last year. MYEFO strengthened the budget, reduced debt and reinforced our government's responsible approach to economic and fiscal management. The figures demonstrate a significantly stronger budget position than the one we inherited and a stronger position than was forecast at the time of the election. In fact, it was the only mid-year update on record to deliver a better bottom line in every year of the forward estimates, less debt in every year of the forward estimates and net policy decisions that improve, not worsen, the fiscal outlook. We are delivering on our commitments, making space for unavoidable pressures and strengthening the budget all at once.

In my electorate of Braddon, people are practical. They are not interested in slogans or scare campaigns. They want to know if their government understands the pressures they face and if it's taking responsible action to ease those pressures while strengthening the services that our communities rely on. The Albanese Labor government is doing exactly that. Under this Labor government, 47,000 taxpayers in Braddon received a tax cut on 1 July 2024 Those who earn between $18,201 and $45,000 will receive another tax cut on 1 July this year and another in July 2027. This helps put more money in the pockets of workers. That is not accidental. It is the result of deliberate, responsible reform that puts fairness at the centre of the tax system. Unlike those opposite, who prioritise tax arrangements that overwhelmingly benefit the top end of town, Labor's approach delivers relief to low- and middle-income earners—the people who spend their money locally and keep regional economies like the electorate of Braddon moving. We've done this while improving the budget position and reducing debt, proving that you can provide cost-of-living relief without recklessness.

For younger Australians and working families in Braddon, student debt has been another significant pressure. Around 7,866 people in Braddon have a HECS debt. For years they watched their debt grow faster than they could repay it. Our government acted where others had failed to act. We fixed unfair indexation and reduced student debt, giving thousands of Braddon residents the chance to get ahead, not fall further behind. I've spent a significant amount of time at the Cradle Coast campus of the University of Tasmania, and I've spoken to students about what having that money back in their hip pocket means to them. And they are absolutely grateful. They say the difference that that makes to them into the future is really significant. That reform is already making a difference to household budgets, to confidence and to economic participation. I've spoken to many of these students, as I said, and they are grateful for that relief.

Cost-of-living pressure also shows up every time someone walks into a pharmacy to fill their prescription. That is why we delivered cheaper medicines, a reform that is particularly important in regional communities with older populations and higher rates of chronic illness. As of 31 December 2025, Braddon residents have saved more than $10 million through cheaper medicines. That is a concrete, measurable outcome. It means fewer people skipping their prescriptions, fewer people delaying their treatment and better health outcomes right across the electorate.

But health care is not just about affordability; it's about access. For too long, regional communities were expected to accept less when it came to health care. That is why the Albanese Labor government has made the largest investment in Medicare in its history, and Braddon is seeing the benefits of that investment. I'm really pleased that Braddon now has Medicare urgent care clinics in both Burnie and Devonport. These clinics provide bulk-billed care during extended hours, giving people an alternative to the emergency department for urgent but not life-threatening conditions. That means that families can get care across the weekends and out of hours in the evenings. They reduce pressure on our local emergency wards at the North West Regional Hospital and the Mersey general hospital, and they do so without cost to patients, because that is what Medicare is supposed to do.

Bulk-billing more broadly is recovering because our government chose to act. It was in the June quarter of 2025 that the GP bulk-billing rate in Braddon was at 87.3 per cent. That represents thousands of appointments where people were not charged a gap fee—appointments that were accessible because we tripled the bulk-billing incentive for those who needed it most. Patients only needed their Medicare card, not their credit card. Those opposite let bulk-billing collapse, and we are rebuilding it through that initiative.

When we talk about health care, we must also talk about mental health. Mental health care is health care, and, for too long, it was treated as optional or secondary, particularly in our regional areas. Under the Albanese Labor government, Medicare mental health centres have been delivered in both Burnie and Devonport. They are both open now. They're walk-in centres. They provide free walk-in mental health care without the need for a referral. The thing that I really like about these is that both of these services have peer support workers—people who have been through the difficult times. People who walk in can talk to someone who not only has experienced it but also provides that support. They are there for people in crisis, for those who are struggling with anxiety or depression and for those who need support before a situation escalates. They are reducing barriers to care, but they are also saving lives, which is really important.

Taken together—tax relief, student debt reform, cheaper medicines, urgent care clinics, bulk-billing support and mental health centres—this is what delivery looks like. These are not theoretical benefits; they are policies that are improving the lives of people who live in Braddon right now. And, importantly, they reflect Labor's belief that regional Australians deserve the same quality of services and opportunities as those in our major cities. The Albanese Labor government does not see communities like Braddon as an afterthought. We see them as central to Australia's future.

Our fiscal position matters, especially at a time when inflation, while having moderated significantly from its peak, remains higher than any of us would like. Importantly, in its statement in early February, the Reserve Bank did not point to government spending as a source of inflationary pressure. In fact, the RBA made it clear that the current pressure on inflation is coming from private demand. In the Statement on monetary policy, the RBA upgraded its near-term GDP outlook and explicitly attributed this to stronger private demand. They stated:

The near-term upward revision is driven by private demand …

and—

The contribution of public demand to year-ended GDP growth has continued to ease in recent quarters, as expected.

The data bears this out. In the year to September, annual private demand growth increased more than five-fold. Over the same period, annual public demand growth was less than a third of what it had been the year before. When we came to office, inflation was 6.1 per cent and rising rapidly. It is now significantly lower. Underlying inflation was almost five per cent, and it too has eased considerably.

We recognise very clearly that people are still under pressure. That is why we are continuing to roll out responsible, targeted cost-of-living support, tax cuts for every taxpayer, relief from student debt, cheaper medicines and more bulk-billing right across the country—things like Medicare urgent care clinics, Medicare mental health centres, and opportunities for people to get help when they need it most and not have to pay for it. We on this side care about our communities and we care about our regional communities—communities right across the country like those in the electorate that I represent, the electorate of Braddon.

Jamie Chaffey (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today we're here in this place once again to talk about adding yet more money to a budget that is already weighing our nation down like a lead anchor. This isn't 20 bucks in a jar to put towards a bit of home maintenance; this is $12.7 billion that our nation can ill afford. This money is to fund the Albanese Labor government's last budget—a budget Australians rely on to be fiscally responsible, a budget Australians rely on to be carefully crafted to make the most of their hard-earned dollars and a budget that must take every cent into account.

This is not a matter of objecting to the specific policies and programs that will be funded under this extra money; this is an objection to the carefree, last-minute, devil-may-care attitude to spending Australians' money. That is the real problem here. The coalition has taken the Labor government to task over this recently, with the Reserve Bank of Australia increasing interest rates to 3.85 per cent to deal with the rising tide of inflation. That rise will knock some first homeowners out of the running for their first home. It will add to the financial pressure so many Australian families are already feeling when they look at their rising power bills, their rising food bills, their water bills and all the many other expenses that are starting to pile up. What is Labor's response? 'It's not our fault.' The Reserve Bank governor begs to differ. She confirmed government spending had contributed to the latest interest rate hike—a truth that is cold comfort to a young couple in Broken Hill, Narrabri or Parkes who can no longer afford to buy their first home. We are already looking at the highest-spending government in 40 years outside of the pandemic.

Thanks to the Albanese Labor government, Australia will soon hit $1 trillion in debt, with $100 billion added since they came to government. We are looking at an interest amount on that debt of $50,000 a minute. That's the equivalent of a possible house deposit in regional Australia going up in smoke every single minute. This is spending at a level most Australians simply can't comprehend.

What could this $12.7 billion do in regional Australia? It could change lives in the electorate of Parkes, where parents remain on the waiting list for child care. Older Australians can't access aged care, and our underresourced police stations are struggling to deal with the rise of crime. What could $12.7 billion do in communities still waiting for progress on the Inland Rail? What could $12.7 billion do for Narrabri, which lost $7.5 million when the inland port was shelved as soon as those on that side of the House formed government? What could it do in Dubbo, which has had $20.6 million to fix damaged roads knocked back? The Lachlan Shire Council was denied $29 million for its roads, the Narrabri Shire Council was denied $21.5 million, and the Burke Shire Council was denied $14.9 million to maintain its road network.

The hits just keep on coming for the electorate of Parkes and for regional Australia—and here we are again with the Labor government holding out their hands for more of your money. Where is the promise of caring for Australians, the promise for making things cheaper and—as promised at the last two elections—the promise to leave no Australians behind? My office has dealt consistently with troubled carers, parents and people with disabilities who no longer can receive that at-home visit that's needed from carers because this government has cut funding for travel for our most vulnerable people.

Communications in the bush have gone backwards. We have heard over and over again of the increased problems with the coverage since the 3G network was shut down in October 2024 under Labor's watch. Many of those across the vast tracts of land in my own electorate of Parkes who have been lucky enough to get a bar or two of coverage have now lost it. The simple ability to get hold of someone during a time of emergency or for business purposes or simply to have a chat with one of your neighbours, for some of those who were fortunate to have it, now no longer exists. There are many more who are still waiting for certainty that their triple zero calls will be heard. I've heard from farmers, from travellers, from businesspeople and from parents of students that their telecommunications is not only substandard but non-existent. Once upon a time, you could stand out in a paddock and ring triple zero in an emergency. Now we have business owners in regional towns that need to walk out into their street just to access internet banking. What's happened to the Mobile Black Spot Program? It stalled under the Albanese Labor government.

Where is our health care, where is our child care, and where is our aged care? In amongst all this spending, a person suffering a suspected heart attack in Broken Hill might not be able to get their local emergency department. I know this because I've heard from them. Red tape and lack of assistance for councils might be preventing someone in urgent need in Cobar from accessing aged care. I know this because I've heard from them. I've heard from the community, such as Coonamble, Narrabri, Bourke, Nyngan and Broken Hill, that regional Australia has a childcare desert. This is not rhetoric; it is the lived experience of many people in the Parkes electorate. Where are our urgent care clinics in the Parkes electorate, which covers more than half of New South Wales? There are none, zero, not one. There are problems with the urgent care clinic model. The model is making it tough for existing clinics. But in my electorate we have neither urgent care clinics nor any assistance for healthcare providers trying to find professionals to work in our remote areas.

What about the much hype around fee-free TAFE? It fails to take into account the people in my electorate and regional Australia that may be required to travel up to four hours or even more to get to a TAFE building where there's a qualified teacher.

Let's sum it up. Inflation is up. Interest rates are up. Big projects are at a standstill. We have problems with health care, child care, aged care, education, road funding, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, telecommunications and so much more.

Now some of the areas of the Parkes electorate are heading into drought, and some of them are actually flooding as well at the moment. What assistance can our primary producers expect from the Labor government? Where is the support for our food and fibre producers who feed our country and many other nations through our exports, and where is the support for our struggling councils? The latest local government audit by the Audit Office of New South Wales reported problems with financial sustainability in a number of councils in my electorate. It said that Central Darling Shire had low availability of cash and was highly dependent on government grants that aren't there under Labor, Cobar Shire had insufficient revenue and was highly dependent on government grants that again are not there under Labor, and Walgett Shire had insufficient revenue and was highly dependent on government grants. They're still waiting. Local government in regional areas right across Australia are struggling due to our smaller populations, escalating costs and more and more demands on them to do the job previously done by other tiers of government. I don't see them here with their hand out for $12.7 billion.

Some of that $12.7 billion, more than $2.9 billion, is for the cheaper home battery project. That adds up to about $7.2 billion in total over a four-year period. This cheaper at-home battery program was not in Labor's energy policy they took to the last election. There's no mandate for this program, yet $7.2 billion of taxpayer dollars will be spent over a four-year period.

How many billions have already been ploughed into renewable energy? The Climate Energy Finance think tank says the Albanese Labor government and the Minns state government have committed about $76 billion of taxpayer money to climate and green energy spending over the past three years. That includes $19 billion on Rewiring the Nation, $7 billion on critical minerals production tax credits and $6.7 billion on hydrogen production tax credits. The Institute of Public Affairs has reported that, in 2024, out of Australia's 50 largest solar farms, only 28 per cent were entirely owned by Australians. Of the total subsidy paid, $1.2 billion was given to solar and wind projects that were foreign owned. These billions of dollars are going straight out of our country.

The rationale seems to be that, if we sink enough funding into alternate energy, eventually something's going to go right. With all of that spending, you'd think we would be looking at cheaper power bills, but no—more spending, higher bills, spiralling costs and no energy certainty. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is a cheaper way, there is a better way and there is a fairer way.

Let's take a look at the events that followed in this place after that horrific Bondi terrorist attack. This was a heartbreaking day in our history and one that requires a response from cool heads. Instead, we got a panicked reaction that kicked out at Australia's legitimate gun owners. Labor estimated $1 billion for a gun buyback program would be enough. However, experts in this field say this cost could be more like $5 billion to $10 billion. This decision has been pushed through by the Albanese government with the support of the Greens without consideration of the massive cost to all Australians. I couldn't see that funding for the gun buyback program in the plea for more money within this bill.

Not only is there a staggering upfront financial cost to this rushed decision-making; I'm hearing of the devastating impacts on small businesses in my electorate. These reforms could mean the ends of their small businesses. I've heard from struggling gun owners in Walgett, in Dubbo, in Moree and in Broken Hill. I quote from one of these family business owners:

None of these changes stop or will ever stop what happened, but the government will never admit its own faults. It will only ever pass them on to people like me.

We know the loss of any small business in a regional community can have serious impacts. The potential loss of these businesses has huge consequences not only to the suppliers but also to their consumers—another blow for regional Australia.

Spending is needed—spending is needed in all of the areas that I've outlined—but this appropriation bill is a clear indication of poor planning, of spiralling spending in all the wrong places and of an out-of-control budget that continues to fuel the rocket of inflation.

Debate adjourned.

Federation Chamber adjourned 19:24