Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

We recognise that people are under pressure. When we have brought measures to this chamber to support households with those pressures, what has happened over on the other side? What has happened, Senator Cash? You have voted no every single time, whether it be on energy bill rebates, housing investments or some of the investments we've done in health on cheaper medicines. Remember how they fought tooth and nail to make sure that we couldn't allow people to have 60 days prescribing to actually pay half the price of medicines? 'Oh, no. You're not allowed that. We want you to pay twice as much as you should'—that was the position over there. So I am not going to be lectured by Senator Scarr and others about how to support households when inflation is higher than we would like.

We on this side get that households are under pressure, and that's why all of us turn up to work every day not to fight each other in a race to the Sky interview room but to actually think about our constituents, the people that we were sent here to serve. That's what we are doing. Every single day that's what this group does. We talk about how to help people, and we watch in shock and horror as you tear each other apart. We cannot believe it—the indulgent exercise that we have witnessed for the last month or so as you tear each other down while we are turning up to work every day to make sure we look after people and do everything we can to help them at this point in time.