Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Make no mistake, this cost-of-living crisis is being made far worse by the indifference of this government to those who right now are doing it the very toughest. After the biggest electoral win for progressives that this nation has ever seen, you would think that the new government would finally work towards supporting folks in our communities who are struggling to get by. They certainly talk the talk. This morning the Prime Minister said these exact words:

A compassionate nation like ours cannot simply allow the suffering of our fellow Australians to continue unabated.

Prime Minister, you are absolutely right, which is why it is particularly galling that this government, despite talking the talk, is continuing to sacrifice the most-vulnerable, most-struggling people in our community to the spiralling cost of living.

Yesterday the rate of support payments and pensions increased ever so slightly. The reality of this increase is that it amounts to an increase of only two per cent in CPI on these payments, compared to an inflation rate of seven per cent. Yet, in this context, the Albanese government is asking the community to congratulate it for this increase, to celebrate it, to treat it as evidence of a benevolent Labor Party policy, when in truth it is a fiction. All they have done is index these payments to CPI. People are rightly furious about this because people who struggle week by week, month by month, on these payments understand the difference between indexation and an actual increase, because they live it every single day. I have to ask where the government gets the gall to attempt to advertise this as a win while so many Australians are languishing in poverty, which it, in no uncertain terms, has chosen to maintain. It is particularly affecting those on the disability support pension who were left behind again and again by the previous government and can expect, it seems, no better under— (Time expired.)