Richard Dowling (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think this urgency motion does go to a real and legitimate anxiety of Australian households. People are watching the events in the Middle East. They're seeing pressures on global energy markets, and they're wondering what it means for their fuel bills, their grocery bills and their broader cost of living. We heard from the head of the International Energy Agency, in the last day or so, that this crisis is more than both the 1970s oil crises combined. It's a significant scale.

When conflict disrupts international markets, the effects don't stay neatly contained overseas. They move through shipping, freight, fuel and supply chains, and, before long, they arrive at the kitchen tables of homes right across the country. That is why the right response is not panic; it's practical action. As my colleague Senator Whiteaker outlined, this government does understand that Australians are still under pressure. There is no denial of that. That is why cost-of-living relief remains an essential priority.

We have delivered tax cuts for every taxpayer, and we have another round to come in July. We've backed wage increases for minimum and award workers. We've reduced the maximum cost of PBS medicines to just $25. We've expanded bulk-billing, opened Medicare urgent care clinics and provided more funding for public hospitals. We've increased rent assistance, strengthened income support and cut student debt by 20 per cent. We've expanded low-deposit pathways for first home buyers and backed more housing apprenticeships to help build the homes Australia needs. We're also helping households reduce ongoing energy costs, including through support for home batteries. These are all cost-of-living measures. They are all practical measures. They are not abstract claims. They are designed to take pressure off households, where families actually feel it.

At the same time, the government has acted swiftly on fuel security. We've empowered the ACCC to watch for unfair price spikes and anticompetitive conduct. We've moved to release part of the minimum stockholding obligation for petrol and diesel to support supply. We have acted to bring more fuel into the market. We have signed an agreement with Singapore, one of the country's biggest sources of refined petroleum, to keep supplies of diesel and petrol flowing. We are working with states and territories and industry to make sure fuel gets to where it is needed, especially in regional communities.

Following National Cabinet, the government also strengthened coordination through a Fuel Supply Taskforce Coordinator so that decisions are implemented quickly and supply chains keep moving. That matters everywhere, but it matters especially in my home state of Tasmania. Tasmanians feel freight and transport pressures more sharply than most. Regional communities feel disruption early. Farmers, small businesses, working families, cannot simply absorb endless shocks flowing from overseas conflict.

The motion put to us also raises the issue of taxing gas exports as though it is a straightforward answer to cost-of-living pressures. It's not. It's not a straightforward answer to cost-of-living pressures. Cost of living and taxes on our natural resources are two separate issues entirely. Resource taxation is a complex policy question that deserves complex consideration, and it has merit. It goes to investment settings, production decisions, long-term supply and energy security. Those issues should be debated carefully, not conflated with a cost-of-living crisis we are in right now that is driven by overseas conflicts. It is not a simple, quick-fix slogan solution. If we get the balance wrong and scare away investment, we'll risk reducing supply, and, when supply tightens, prices rise. That's not just a theory. That is the risk if we get this wrong.

So the objective is to ease pressure on households and businesses, and we need to be very careful about pretending that more tax on natural resources is some simple, consequence-free answer because it's not. Australians need steady policy, not slogans. They need government focused on the basics: wages, health care, medicines, housing and energy security. They need confidence that when global instability puts pressure on household budgets the government will act calmly, practically and in the national interest, and that is what this government is doing, because the cost of living is not an academic exercise. It is whether a parent can fill the car and still afford the weekly shop. That is what Australians rightly expect their national government to be focused on.