Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Wow! Here's an opportunity to talk about the most important period this country is facing at the moment and the world is facing—the Middle East crisis—and they want to talk about jerrygate. They want to talk about Bunningsgate. The most ridiculous questions about what is actually going on right now—trying to actually unleash some good, credible answers that this government have been putting forward in the era of dealing with the fuel challenges that we have at the moment.

Of course, then they start raising some questions about what's happening regarding excise and the excise cut. Now there's some problem with it. Why you do want to start looking the case of inflation, where the advantages are of this decision that we've made? Not only will it help mums and dads and make their fuel cheaper and not only will it decrease petrol and diesel prices; it will also turn around and decrease, by half a percentage point through the year of June 2026 on Treasury estimates, inflation. It will reduce inflation.

If you want to start coming here and asking serious questions about what is going on, then you'll get some serious answers—because you start talking about what we are doing about the cost of living. When we start asking ourselves questions about the cost of living, you have to ask what the alternatives are. What we've been doing on cost of living is not only making sure we put the correct policies in place to deal with the fuel challenges that the world is facing and that this country is facing as a result of the Middle East War but also bringing a whole series of critically important strategies in to deal with the cost of living. Those strategies have gone to Medicare, urgent care clinics, women's health, minimum wage increases and the list of the things that we've brought to the table to make sure that Australians who are doing it tough have an opportunity to get a fair response from this government and from policy goes on and on.

But we can't hear anything sensible for those across the way. We hear, as we say, the inventorygate. When we start looking at the sorts of solutions the opposition have put forward—when they say this is all costing too much to reduce fuel excise—for example, then shadow treasurer and now opposition leader, Angus Taylor, was the key architect to hike up income taxes for over 14 million taxpayers. That's his answer to how you do cost relief when you're not giving people cost relief. He also went on to be one of the key architects of their $10 billion taxpayer funded long-lunches policy. This is another cost relief. I don't know how that's a cost relief but, you know what, they've worked out somehow that that's going to help productivity and the cost of living. It will certainly help for well-paid, well-heeled bosses. It won't help every ordinary Australian, every middle Australian or low-income earner. Of course, in the past, when they think about cost relief, they thought about things like sacking 41,000 frontline workers and gutting essential services like Medicare to pay, in that case, for $600 billion worth of nuclear fantasy. I guess, in this case, they want to give it with one hand and take it away with the other.

What we're facing with those on the opposite side is no coherent strategy about how to deal with either the fuel crisis or cost-of-living challenges. Every proposition they put up mean there are more costs to the Australian public. The government has put forward a critical strategy for fuel, a critical strategy for cost of living, and it's about time you got on board. (Time expired)