Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let's be frank. This disallowance motion isn't just a bad motion; it's a confused motion, and it's actually a revealing motion. In one single act, being this disallowance motion, brought forward by Senator Roberts, we see laid bare something that the Australian public is increasingly becoming more aware of—that the Liberal Party of Australia and One Nation are no longer fellow travellers. They are no longer occasional collaborators, sometime frien   ds. They are politically, strategically and ideologically intertwined. At this point, the Liberal Party are not even a party anymore; they are just a very, very bad One Nation tribute band, and, like with most tribute bands, we are not enjoying the music.

Jokes aside, let us start with the facts. Senator Roberts has moved to disallow the Competition and Consumer (Industry Codes—Cash Acceptance) Regulations 2025, a regulation that is quite simply already delivering exactly what Australians were promised. The Albanese government said that we would guarantee the right to use cash for essential purposes, and we did it. From 1 January this year, Australians are able to walk into a fuel station or a grocery store and use cash, their own hard-earned money, to pay for essential goods. For the first time ever, there is a legal obligation for businesses to accept cash. This government did that. Before, there was none. That is the reality. But why does that matter? Despite all of the noise, the conspiracy laced talking points from Senator Roberts, Labor believes cash still matters. And we go one step further. We want to put more money, more cash, in the back pocket of ordinary Australians, and we've done that with tax cut after tax cut, voted against by that side of politics. We want to put more cash in the back pocket of Australians.

But we didn't stop there. One of the first things we did when we came to government was protect energy rates, something that has always been under threat by the Liberal Party. They took a run at Sunday penalty rates, and we knew that they would do it again if given the chance. They are always after taking money out of the back pocket of the Australian workers. We didn't stop there. We made same job, same pay law. Now, we have workers who are being ripped off by up to $30,000 in my home state of Queensland, working hard underground in mines in Central Queensland. That side of politics, One Nation, is very happy to see them being ripped off by $30,000, so we are not going to be lectured about cash by people who want to take cash out of the back pockets of ordinary workers.

We know how important the reliance on cash is to Australian workers. Around one in 10 Australians rely on cash for most of their in-person purchases. That is not trivial. That is not fringe. That's real people, older Australians, people in regional Queensland, people who rely on the certainty, the accessibility and the control that cash gives them. Around 1.5 million Australians use cash for 80 per cent of their transactions. Cash is not nostalgia; it is a lifeline. The Albanese Government's has recognised that. But we have also recognised something else. You cannot simply impose blanket rules without understanding the impacts that that could have on small businesses. We struck a balance—a cash mandate that applies to essential services, such as groceries and fuels, and a cap of $500; operating hours that reflect real-world trading conditions; and an exemption for small business with under $10 million in turnover. We also built into it a review for three years. That is what responsible government looks like—measured, consulted and targeted.

When Senator Roberts comes into the chamber, waving his finger around, you have to ask: what exactly does he think he is achieving here? This motion isn't just misguided; it is redundant. The legislation he wants already exists thanks to this Labor government. His actions today are frankly an admission that he does not understand the very law that he is trying to dismantle. Worse than that, if it succeeded, it would strip away the very protections he claims to support. It would remove the obligation for businesses to accept cash. It would make life harder for the very Australians, the battlers, that One Nation claims to stand up for. Every opportunity they get to stand up for battlers in this place they do not take. They vote against the interests of hardworking Australians time and time again. They voted against same-job same-pay. They voted against penalty rates. They voted against tax cuts. They do not want cash in your back pocket; they want it in Gina Rinehart's.

This motion is a classic own goal from the One Nation playbook. The same people who tell working people in this country, the battlers, one thing, and, when they come to Canberra and they sit on that leather, they do the exact opposite, thinking that nobody's going to notice. This is another example of bad policy bluff without any detail or sense of reality. Every time when scrutiny arrives and when real questions are asked of One Nation, their house of cards falls over. We saw that just days ago from Senator Hanson down in Adelaide. She was asked a simple question in South Australia in the election about who would cost One Nation's policies, and she exploded. I think it's perfectly logical—