Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the Government has repeatedly broken promises to Australians on cost of living, energy prices, and housing affordability, leaving families worse off financially; and

(2) calls on the Government to take responsibility for its broken promises and deliver living standards and ease pressure on Australian households.

It's been 13 days since the Labor government handed down their budget, and the one question that continues to resonate throughout Australia is, 'Can we trust this prime minister?' The answer is to be found in the track record of this government over the last four years. This Labor government is living on a boulevard of broken promises. Firstly, they promised they would ease the cost of living. Secondly, they promised to reduce power prices. Thirdly, before the last election it was made very clear that they were not going to make changes to the taxation on the capital gains tax and negative gearing. Four years of this Labor government, and we have a litany of broken promises that are ultimately making life much harder for Australians than it needs to be.

Since this Labor government has been elected, Australians have suffered the worst fall in living standards in the advanced economies around the world. Inflation is raging out of control, at 4.6 per cent, and the recent budget papers project it's going to rise to five per cent. The worst thing about inflation is it is compounding; it just goes up and up. That's five per cent on five per cent on 4.5 per cent on 4.5 per cent. That's why the cost of everything is going up under this Labor government.

The first and most memorable broken promise of this government was clearly the promise prior to the 2022 election, in relation to reducing power bills by $275—a promise which they have not only broken but smashed, because power prices have gone in the other direction by about 30 per cent over that time. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy is more interested in globetrotting the world than he is about your power bill at home. He's measuring his success by the stamps he gets on his passport when we know the true measure of his failure is the power bills you receive at home. We've got small businesses and families that are suffering because their power bills are so big that you simply can't jump over them.

As I said, the latest budget from 13 days ago crystallised this government as the highest taxing government Australia has ever seen. There's one reason why taxes are necessary for this government. It's because they've run out of their own money. What does a Labor government do when it runs out of money? It comes after yours. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Labor is chasing more tax so they can feed their spending habits. The budget from 13 days ago ultimately delivered broken promises, higher taxes, more debt and fewer homes. When we consider that last promise that was made—that solemn pledge prior to the last election that they would not change the taxation arrangements for negative gearing and capital gains tax—what did they do in that recent budget? They broke that promise too, and Australians are rightfully questioning whether they can trust this treasurer. They're rightfully asking whether they can trust this prime minister.

In fact, no sector has been left unharmed by this budget. It doesn't matter whether you're over 65 and you're now losing your private health insurance rebate, whether you're a young person wanting to create a startup or whether you're just hoping to get a home. Having now read that the changes in taxation are going to lead to—you guessed it—fewer homes being built, I get stories like this from Zoe in Pimpama in my electorate: she served our country in the Navy for 26 years; she's now caring for her autistic adult son, her autistic teenage daughter and her elderly parents; and quite frankly the numbers are not adding up for Zoe. She's like many Australians. She's sending her children to school with cereal in ziplock bags for lunch and she's living off food bank donations. This is what's happening under this Labor government. This is the human cost of this government's failures.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Electoral Matters) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The motion is seconded, and I reserve my right to speak.

Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What are living standards? Are they the level of wellbeing of households, which encompass various dimensions such as consumption, income, health, education, nutrition and housing? Are they a set of material conditions that people everywhere ought to have, no matter their intentions or conception of a good life or what other rights they may claim, or are they all of those factors that contribute to a person's wellbeing and happiness? It is probably right that they're a combination of all of those things and that what someone considers an adequate standard of living differs from the person down the street, in another community or in another state or territory. There's also quite rightly a debate in how to measure living standards: GDP, the Human Development Index or some other metric. Again, a combination of approaches depending on the context in and purpose for which standards are being measured is probably right.

What is not up for debate, however, is this government's focus on cost-of-living relief for Australian families. No matter which way you look at it, cost-of-living relief has been the government's No. 1 focus. The government, as we just heard, is frequently criticised for spending on cost-of-living relief, is frequently criticised for endeavouring to find savings and efficiencies to pay for that cost-of-living relief and is then criticised for not doing enough to relieve cost-of-living pressures. These arguments, which unhelpfully seek to criticise rather than constructively hold the government to account, are unproductive, but that is just the political climate we live in.

What is for certain, what's always being talked about, is what the government is doing on the cost of living. It's the No. 1 priority, which is why it is always the No. 1 topic in this place and in households across Australia. What the government is doing on the cost of living may not always please everyone, but the level at which it is reported on, examined, dissected and measured means there is always a cost-of-living initiative happening. You're talking about it because we're delivering it. This is the No. 1 item on the government's policy agenda: the economy—how to grow it, how to make it more productive, how to improve living standards, how to take pressure off working Australian families. Short-term initiatives, such as a few hundred dollars of relief here and there, are often the source of criticism, but they are not the backbone of the government's cost-of-living agenda. The backbone can be found in many areas of the lives of Australians, such as tax cuts, which are a feature, in three rounds, plus the instant $1,000 deduction plus the Working Australian Tax Offset, and cheaper medicines, at $25 or $7.70 frozen until the end of the decade for concession cardholders. This is not just a healthcare initiative; it is a cost-of-living initiative. More bulk-billed GP visits—I note that fully bulk-billed clinics have doubled in my electorate of Sturt since the beginning of 2026—are not just a healthcare policy. They are a cost-of-living policy.

The reduction in student debt of 20 per cent, welcomed by thousands of students across Australia, is not just an education policy; it is a cost-of-living policy. Equally, free TAFE has a dual design. Not only has it encouraged thousands of Australians to obtain a qualification in a critical industry or an industry with skill shortages; it is a cost-of-living measure. Paid prac, where students studying—for example, teaching nursing or social work—receive a $300-a-week payment when they are out on what are sometimes multiple week-long placements, is a cost-of-living measure. The multiple rounds of energy bill relief rolled out by the government were also a cost-of-living measure. More recently, the government cut the fuel excise in a deliberate, targeted and effective effort to provide cost-of-living relief to Australian families.

So, if we are talking about cost-of-living promises, then this is what the government promised to deliver: cheaper medicines, more bulk-billing, more urgent care clinics, more endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics, more tax cuts, 20 per cent relief from student debt, and free TAFE, just to name a few initiatives. These have been delivered. This government is delivering, and it will continue to craft policies that have cost-of-living relief for the Australian people at the heart of the agenda for the rest of this term and beyond.

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Electoral Matters) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have seen and heard it all now—a motion about living standards in the House, and the Treasurer has got Labor MPs in here today trying to redefine what living standards are. Aussies know what living standards are, and they know that they are lower today than the day that this Prime Minister took office. Indeed, real wages have fallen by three per cent, and they are still falling. But these aren't economic statistics that we debate at roundtables and productivity summits like those opposite. These are the experiences of Australians today who are poorer than the day that this government took office. Australians know that every time they leave a supermarket, they walk out of a cafe or they open their power bill. Australians are being hit by a trifecta from this mob. Their living standards are down, their taxes are up, and their interest rates are high and going higher. It makes it harder and harder for Aussies to make ends meet. That is why we are in here today talking about the living standards that Australians experience, not trying to redefine what Australians know to be true.

In recent days, in the wake of a budget of betrayal built on Labor lies, we've seen the government out there trying to defend the indefensible, along with their mates the teals, who are very close to coming out, I see, loud and proud as a party today. They are arguing that it's the tech sector alone that should be exempt from this government's wicked assault on capital gains in this country. I'd remind the teals and the government of where the wealth and prosperity in this nation comes from. It is from the mining sector in Western Australia. It is high time that they remember that the big holes today that are spitting out the cash that pays for Medicare, the NDIS and our defences started as small holes funded by mum-and-dad investors 20, 30 or even 40 years ago.

Western Australia's mining and resources sector contributes more to the national economy than any single other industry in this nation. Literally billions in GST, company tax and income tax comes from the incredibly well-paid workers in the Pilbara donned in fluoro. I know that because I was one not that long ago. They are the funds that prop up the Commonwealth budget that would be unrecognisable without it. WA's net contribution to the Commonwealth is more than $13,000 per person, which is 19 times higher than the next contributor, New South Wales, which is chipping in $700 per person. Every other state and territory in this nation has their hand out. They have their hand out at the same time as living standards are declining.

Here's the kicker: with the assault on capital gains tax making the investment of mums and dads in shares ever less attractive, is it really the case that we're going to see founders hooking up a caravan, driving into the desert and hiring a drill rig with perhaps the last of the money from that register of shareholders—those mums, dads and aspirational Australians who have backed them in, hoping that this tenement, this time, might well be the one? Companies like Fortescue, Northern Star, Mineral Resources, Pilbara Minerals and Liontown were all speculative miners funded by mum-and-dad investors who understood the risk and took it anyway. They are the companies that are building the prosperity that underwrites our standard of living—a standard of living that is declining under this government.

Why is it that this basic question of fairness seems to escape both the government and our new teal party here? A tech founder in Sydney or Melbourne might well risk everything to build a start-up, and the political left falls over itself to praise their entrepreneurial courage. But when an Australian does exactly the same thing, hitches up a caravan, drives a thousand kays into the desert and risks everything in the hope of discovering the next great ore body, suddenly they don't deserve the same recognition, the same discount, the same maths and the same basic fairness. At the end of the day, these are folks who should not be treated as second-class citizens just because their factory floor happens to be in the red dust of the Pilbara and not in the co-working spaces of Surrey Hills.

Western Australia built the prosperity of this nation on the back of risk-takers backed by ordinary Australians who wanted a higher standard of living for themselves and were prepared to put their money on the line for it. The Greens, the teals and the government should think very carefully before taxing that out of existence.

Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity today to talk about the many ways the Albanese Labor government has delivered for our community when it comes to cost-of-living relief and improved living standards. Since coming to government, we have delivered five income tax cuts in five different ways; 50 per cent off the fuel excise to help at the bowser; the biggest boost to Medicare in its history; record rates of bulk-billing, with 25 GP clinics in my electorate now 100 per cent bulk-billing clinics; caps on the price of essential medicines; Medicare urgent care clinics that have seen 68,000 free visits in Corrimal and Dapto alone; 2,521 cheaper home batteries and 14 community batteries in my electorate, helping to slash power prices for thousands of people; nearly 23,000 students in my electorate with thousands wiped off their student debt; cheaper child care for local families; higher wages for nearly three million of Australia's lowest paid workers every year; increases to the Medicare low income levy for over one million Australians; a 50 per cent increase in rent assistance for more than 10,000 Cunningham renters; five per cent deposits, supporting 1,159 first home buyers in Cunningham; and thousands of homes built across the country. I could go on, because these are only some of the ways that we have brought the cost of living down. Needless to say, that is quite a list. But we know that Australians are doing it tough. Inflation, the war in the Middle East and a decade of underinvestment by those opposite, who are now trying to convince people that they would have been better off under a Liberal government—I don't think so. The cost of living has been our No. 1 priority since we came to government. It remains our No. 1 priority, and we have delivered yet another budget that puts the cost of living—and fairness—front and centre.

The reality is that the former government did not invest in health. It did not invest in housing, it did not invest in aged care and it did not give industry confidence in a renewable-energy future—just to name a few. We have had quite a mess to clean up, and we have wasted no time at all. Our focus has been on supporting Australians and those people who are really doing it tough. We want to ensure that Australia is a place that lifts people up and leaves no-one behind. We've worked hard to ensure that workers earn more and keep more of what they earn. Those on the minimum wage or reliant on awards make up about a quarter of Australia's workforce. That's people working in our cafes and supermarkets. They're our cleaners, hairdressers, aged-care workers, childcare workers, delivery drivers—thousands of people who've seen real increases in their wages, with an increase in the minimum wage by over $9,120 every year, thanks to the Albanese Labor government.

We have invested $8.5 billion into Medicare, because health and housing are two of the biggest drains on household budgets. We've capped PBS prescriptions at $25, down from more than $42 under the previous government, and we've added more and more medicines to the PBS, including new and amended medicines under this budget for conditions like cystic fibrosis, chronic kidney disease and cancers—and more, made cheaper. All up, in my electorate, we have seen more than three million cheaper prescriptions filled since we came to government, and that is a real saving in everyone's pocket.

The most effective way to reduce electricity prices is to get more renewables into the grid, and we have certainly done that. For the first time in Australia's history, we have more electricity in our grid supplied by renewables than by coal and gas. The wholesale electricity price has fallen by 14 per cent, and, in my electorate, more than 2,500 homes and businesses now have a solar battery, thanks to our Cheaper Home Batteries Program. I've spoken previously about the difference that this has made to electricity bills in my electorate and what that has meant for local people.

The fact is that, if we had continued along the path the Liberals and Nationals had us on, Australians would be worse off. In the 10 years that they were in power, they built 373 homes. That's it. And they wonder how we are now in a housing crisis. They never had a plan to tackle the cost of living and the big challenges that are facing Australians. The Albanese Labor government is committed to delivering real cost-of-living relief for all Australians.

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is no wonder that we have a trust deficit in Australian politics. I've been sitting in this chamber and listening to the contributions of those opposite, and there are a few points that I would like to make. The member for Cunningham said that she doesn't think Australians would have been better off under a coalition government. Well, what I'd say is: Australians aren't stupid. Australians, I say to you—I say to every single person that's listening—ask yourself this question: am I better off now than I was four-and-a-half years ago? The people in my electorate, on the southern Gold Coast, are not coming up to me and talking about how great things are. They're coming up to me and talking about their issues.

I go back to that trust deficit. The member for Cunningham said that she would leave no-one behind—that it's Labor's philosophy to not leave anybody behind. Tell that to the small-business owners. Tell that to the 50- to 65-year-olds who are being affected in terms of their private health insurance rebate. Tell that to people who have done the right thing by this country, who have worked hard, who have secured their future—or so they thought—and who are now seeing the rules shifting below them. Because I can tell you now those are the people who this government is leaving behind.

The pain and the pressure is real. This cost-of-living crisis that Labor has created is absolutely devastating. It's devastating households, business owners, individuals and pensioners. This is at a time where we've come out of an election where the Prime Minister and the government promised relief. Instead, we've seen that they've delivered pain. They promised $275 off your power bill, but electricity prices have gone up by around 40 per cent. They said mortgages would go down, but we've seen 15 interest rate rises since this government was elected. They promised to implement the stage 3 tax cuts, but that backflipped. And they promised that the cost of living would fall, but we've seen prices rise and pressure build.

We've now seen this disgraceful budget put forward by the Treasurer. It's a budget of broken promises. We're seeing higher taxes, more debt, lower living standards and fewer homes. So it is no wonder that there is a trust deficit in Australian politics. I'll just say, on this recent budget, we've seen the changes that have been announced in relation to the capital gains tax and negative gearing and also in relation to trusts. These are the biggest and most indefensible, broken promises that we've seen by the government, because, before the election, the Prime Minister categorically, without any sense of doubt, ruled out any changes to negative gearing, to trusts and to capital gains tax. He told us that his word is his bond. He said one thing before the election, but he's doing something afterwards. The sad reality is that it's not actually making Australians' lives easier. It's not making housing more affordable for young Australians. It's not making retirement any easier for older Australians, and it's not making it any easier for those who are wanting to put their aspiration to the test and make sure they start a business or invest to secure their future.

But there is another way. I say to Australians and to people in my electorate that it's one thing for us in the opposition to hold this government to account, but it's another thing for us to put forward an alternative vision for the country. That's a vision that will have a fairer, freer and better Australia. We've spoken about generational tax reform, which is something that the Leader of the Opposition outlined in his budget reply speech, a tax back guarantee to once and for all end Labor's inflation tax by indexing income thresholds to inflation. We've spoken about actually addressing the housing crisis and, in part, looking at migration so that we can make sure that migration numbers are linked to how many homes Australia builds, because we all know that this government is not building enough homes. We're looking to put Australians first and make sure that when it comes to social welfare, including the NDIS, it is preserved for Australian citizens, because we all know that we do need to make some tough decisions when it comes to reining in this government's reckless spending. We've also spoken about a future-generations fund so we can actually bank some of the resource windfalls to pay down the debt and build national infrastructure. There is another way. This government has broken its promise to Australians, and it's contributed to this massive trust deficit.

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

I rise to oppose this motion today, and, in doing so, I reflect on the situation that the mover of this motion, the member for Fadden, finds himself at the moment. I just wonder why he's spending so much energy attacking the government, when actually is the Labor Party really the threat in Fadden at the moment? I also reflect on whether there's much point in pointing out the inaccuracies of the Liberal-National coalition, because is anyone in the community really worried about what the Liberal-National coalition are doing at the moment?

I think that where we are now is really a chance to look at how we've got here. We know it's tough. Any local member that's out there in the community—which I'm sure is all 150 of us—knows that people are really doing it tough at the moment, that it is like being out in the trenches there, whether it is finding somewhere to live, whether it's paying an electricity bill. The question, though, is how did we get there? Remember that, federally, over the last 30 years or so, the Liberal-National coalition has been in government for 20 of them. So it's really incredible to think that, after barely four years, this government would have been able to fix the problems that we were left with.

But it is not just the Liberal-National coalition that I'd criticise for this. It is, I guess, a certain mind virus, which took over governments over the last 30 or 40 years, of economic rationalism, this idea that the government should completely absent itself from the field. The one thing that I would try and say to your colleagues in the Liberal-National coalition, Deputy Speaker Buchholz, is to have a look at what made the Liberal-National coalition and the Liberal Party successful in postwar Australia.

In many ways, one of my economic role models was the Liberal premier of South Australia, who was the Premier from 1940 to 1970. He was probably the greatest proponent of building public housing in Australia. We saw that, after 30 years or so of his being in government, of his making sure that within the actual charter of the South Australian Housing Trust was that it would aid in the economic development of the state, of his following an economic policy which essentially provided cheap, affordable housing to workers—you had car workers, railway workers, teachers living in public housing—it was able to keep the pressure off wages, and that was, in turn, able to help business. But what we saw, really, under the Howard governments and under the Morrison government—the Morrison government built something like 370 public houses in the whole 10 years it was in there. What we saw there was a complete abrogation of its responsibilities to intervene in that marketplace and step in where the private sector was clearly failing.

That's why I'm slightly surprised that the Liberal-National coalition keeps wanting to attack the government for the situation that people find themselves in at the moment. This government really is taking, I think, for the first time in decades, a much more interventionist role in the economy—trying to fill that gap that was left by previous governments absenting the space—whether that is in housing, in undertaking the biggest public housing building program in a generation; whether that is in energy, in supercharging the investment in renewable energy to the point where we now have more electricity in the grid than at any other time; whether that be intervening in Medicare, in the biggest single investment of recent times in Medicare, which has restored bulk-billing to, for example, double the number of bulk-billing clinics in Forde alone; whether that's intervening in our critical industries, such as the billion-dollar investment in the smelter in Gladstone, the billions of dollars being invested in Whyalla to maintain our steelworks and the hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in Mount Isa to maintain the smelters there; whether it's intervening again to make sure that TAFE is back up and running again by providing free TAFE to give our tradies and our economy the skills that are needed to build the housing that is so desperately needed. This government is fixing up the problems, and it is going to take a lot of time, but I would encourage the Liberal-National coalition, rather than trying to chase One Nation votes, to go back to their grassroots.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allocated for the debate has now expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for a later hour.