Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What we have in front of us is a motion that starts off with the line:

That the Labor government has delivered a budget that does not have a plan to tackle inflation …

Well, we do have a plan to tackle inflation, a fully articulated one. There are pages and pages of description in the budget papers. It's all there to read. We've had various members in the lower house and in the Senate stand up and talk about the kinds of things that we're doing and the exact details of what we're doing. The fact that you don't like it doesn't mean it's not there. There is a serious issue with some of the scaremongering, spin and hoo-ha that goes on. There really is a lot of detail in those budget papers that goes through quite clearly exactly what it is we are intending to do and exactly what it is that we are doing to curb inflation.

Yesterday I stood in here and I spoke about the positive side, the upside, the relief side, the kinds of things that we are doing to help Australians across this country deal with what is a serious cost-of-living challenge. We saw it coming, and it's getting worse. It wasn't invented, as some around here would say, on 21 May last year, when Labor was elected. You cannot end up in the kind of situation we are in now in that space of time.

The housing crisis that we are seeing is significantly about housing stock and supply. Where is the housing? We have seen 10 years of the coalition government doing very little, seeing these challenges coming down the road and actively choosing to do nothing about it. We are now in a situation where the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is $10 billion—we've heard time and time again this afternoon that there is no detail. Well, there is a very lengthy explanatory memorandum. There is an awful lot of information, an awful lot of detail. Again, just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't there. So take the time, read the EM, then maybe think about what $10 billion of investment would do for the people in this country who are struggling to find somewhere to live.

I have spoken in this place before about my story, my lived experience, of being in abject crisis. When I was three months pregnant, the doctors told me and my partner that our child was likely to be born with a disability. That was alarming. My partner then decided that he couldn't handle that, and he left. I then became unwell, and the doctor told me that I had to give up my job or I would not be able to keep my baby. I chose to keep my baby and lose the partner, and it was really hard. It was really, really hard. But what got me through those times were exactly the things we're talking about. The sole parent pension was my lifeline, and my Medicare card was my saviour. I had access to those payments when in the space of three short months I had gone from being very happy, being very comfortable, having a rosy future, to having nowhere to live. I was sleeping under the kitchen bench at a friend's house. So I get pretty wound up when I listen to some of the rubbish that has been spoken about in here this week.

A $10 billion investment in housing will help people like me at that point of their life—affordable housing, social housing, support for women fleeing domestic violence. We have to do something about the situation we are in. You may not like it. I'm sure that if the Libs, Nats or Greens were in government they would do something else, but they're not. This is our plan. This is the plan that we took to the Australian people, and the majority of them said: 'Yes, that looks like a good plan. We'll take that.' Here we are now, in this chamber, with no action happening. Everyone is filibustering, everyone is trying to avoid a debate and doing anything but bring on this bill. Is that because you are all afraid that if you vote it down the Australian people will actually be a bit pissed?