Sue Lines (President) | Link to this | Hansard source

A letter has been received from Senator Hughes:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

Australia is in an entrenched home grown cost of living crisis, and the Albanese Labor Government has no economic plan to lower inflation, grow the economy, or restore Australia's standard of living.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) | Link to this | Hansard source

This country is in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. This cost-of-living crisis is consistently being made worse by the government's actions and their complete failure when it comes to getting inflation under control, in fact every decision they make makes this homegrown inflation problem worse. They are out there spruiking today, as much as they can, the tax cuts they are giving to all Australians. They are tax cuts that have already gone. The cost of everything has gone up so much that these tax cuts are not even going to hit the sides. It really is more smoke and mirrors from those opposite.

But you don't have to take my word for it. We can take the word of the Sydney Morning Herald's Shane Wright. That bastion of conservative values—not—the Sydney Morning Herald, the cheer squad for the Albanese government, have said:

Research compiled for this masthead by the Australian National University's Centre for Social Research and Methods shows average tax rates for 80 per cent of taxpayers will be back to their current levels or even higher by 2027.

But what does that mean in dollar terms, and what's it going to mean by next year? A middle-income earning household will be paying more income tax in 2025 than in the 2023-24 financial year, despite the tax cuts that start from 1 July. How is that possible? If you listen to those opposite, you've all never had it so good! They're doing a fantastic job in the economy! But those of us with mortgages, those of us who have to put food on the table for kids, those of us who have school fees and schoolbooks and driving around to sports of a weekend know how tough it is and how tough it is for the average family to make ends meet. How do we know that? Because we know that the price of food has gone up by almost 12 per cent.

Now, having a household with three teenagers in it, I can assure you that the food bill was never small. But the fact that it is exponentially going up at a rate of knots means families cannot keep up. We know that food banks are seeing more and more working families coming to them for help. The cost of housing is up by 14 per cent. Rents are up by about the same. And remember the $275 that was coming off your power bill, the number that shall not speak its name? Well, we know that electricity prices, and everyone who gets that energy bill knows, have gone up by more than 21 per cent. Remember renewables? They're cheap! They're free! It's all going to be fantastic! What the government can't tell you and what they won't acknowledge is the $1.5 trillion cost of transmission and distribution when you start looking at this renewable wraith that they've got happening.

When you get your energy bill and you open it up, it's not just the cost of the generation. Fifty per cent of the bill is the distribution and the transmission. But the report that the government rely so heavily on, GenCost, to tell you how great their race to renewables is—has the transmission lines as a sunk cost. That means—for those who didn't study economics, which is clearly those in the government—that we don't need to factor in transmission lines; we don't have to factor in distribution costs, because we're going to assume that by 2030 they're already built. So, in no way is this report that they rely on honest, telling the truth to the Australian people. If you've got an average mortgage of $750,000, guess how much money you've had to find since this government came in. Guess how much more you've had to pay in order to pay off that mortgage. It is $35,000—after tax—not quite the amount of money you've got down the back of the couch. But that's what this government has done to the Australian economy.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I am so pleased that the opposition brought this MPI into the chamber today, because today is a very exciting day for working Australians. Every Australian—the 13.6 million Australian taxpayers—will get a tax cut as of today. Compared with what those opposite, when they were in government for 10 disastrous years, were going to do, the majority of our taxpayers will get a better tax cut. In fact, those earning less than $45,000 a year would not have got anything from those opposite, but they are from the Albanese Labor government.

We acknowledge that there is a cost-of-living crisis. We know things are tough out there for families. That's why we put together a comprehensive plan for assisting Australians to deal with it. There's a $300 energy rebate as of today for every household and small business in this country. There's $325 for small businesses. We know that it was this government that, in our budget, froze the cost of PBS medicines for all Australians for a year, bringing down the cost of medication. We put more medications on the PBS, making them much cheaper. We know what we've done when it comes to health to help with the cost of living. We have actually opened urgent care clinics across the country. In my hometown of Launceston in Tasmania, we've seen the real benefits. The real benefit is that Australian families that need to see a GP can now go to an urgent care clinic. All they need is their Medicare card—no credit card. We've re-incentivised GPs to bulk-bill people. That is something that those on the other side never once did. There is a wage rise for low-income earners in this country—the third in the two years that we've been in government. Those opposite never once stood up for Australian workers and supported them to get a pay rise. In fact, at every opportunity, whether it was to increase wages, to change taxation benefits, which have been cut as of today, or to introduce our energy rebate, they've voted against it.

When they were in government, they had 22 energy policies and landed not one of them. In a decade, they could not land one policy. So we do not back away from investing in renewable energy. What do we have now from the opposition leader, Mr Peter Dutton? We have an energy policy on the never-never. He wants to build nuclear reactors around the country. He can't tell us how many. He certainly can't tell us how much it will cost. But there's one thing we can be very sure of: there's not one expert who believes that's the way of the future for energy. Even if they come online, they will not deliver cheaper energy for the Australian community. We also know that there's no costing for this thought bubble that he's had—this mushroom cloud that the Liberals and Nationals are living under at the moment. All we know is that Mr Dutton said, 'The cost is going to be big, but we don't know how big it's going to be.'

We have also supported an increase, as of today, to superannuation for Australian taxpayers. It will go from 11 per cent to 11.5 per cent. We have done more in terms of making child care affordable. We have increased paid parental leave, and those working within government will actually get superannuation paid on that parental leave. Those are good things for Australian families. They're supporting families to be able to make the best choice for how to look after and raise their children. They're now able to split leave between the parents, letting them choose who has what amount of time off. These are tangible things that are going to help Australian families.

The unfortunate thing is that we know that, after those opposite were in government for 10 very long, disastrous years where they did nothing, we've had to clean up their mess. We know that they left us with a trillion-dollar debt, and what have we done in two years and three budgets? We've brought down two surpluses. That surely gives the Australian people some confidence that we can manage the economy and look after the Australian people's interests for their betterment.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I can't believe what I'm hearing here. You say you're great economic managers. I'll go back to the time when the Keating government handed over to the Howard government. You actually had a $96 billion debt. Then what happened after that? The coalition handed $20 billion to the Labor Party, who took it over. That was the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. Apart from that, you actually handed on a $250 billion debt to the coalition when they took over. So don't tell me you're good economic managers at all. The facts are: yes, we are in one hell of a mess; yes, people are doing it tough out there; the cost of living is ridiculous; and people are finding it hard.

I see the government have poured the new Governor-General another $200,000. She's now on $700,000 a year. Then this government has given $600 million for football for PNG. You have no idea how the Australian people feel about that one. They are absolutely furious. Then you spent $450 million on attempting to have the Voice. You have disregarded what the people think about the Voice, because you're still putting it in your own legislation and you're pushing ahead with dividing this nation.

You have failed the Australian people. You talk about a surplus of $9 billion. That is just absolutely nothing. Look at your debt. How much have you paid off your debt? That's what we want to know. That's what the Australian people want to know. How much have you paid off your debt? Basically, a household has $600 coming in. That's to run the whole household. You paid $9 off that—that's your $9 billion surplus. I'm putting it in simple terms. So you reckon you have a surplus of $9 out of $600 a year income. 'But don't look over here; we borrowed another $200 billion, which we put on our loan.' Don't tell me you're running an economy, because you're not.

Your cost of living is going up because you're fixated on wind and solar. You're absolutely fixated on it. Then you hand Twiggy Forrest $2 billion for hydrogen, which will not work. And then you keep going ahead with the Snowy 2.0, and that is an absolute disaster, which will cost now $12 billion. By the time you put in transmission lines, it will be up to $20 billion. You're not good economic managers. You are actually causing the cost-of-living crisis because you don't have dispatchable energy at a cheap cost. You have lied to the Australian people. You said you would lower the cost of energy by $275 a year, which you haven't done. You have actually spent money like it's 'just go and pick another batch of money off the tree'. The Australian taxpayers are paying for it, not you. You're absolutely hopeless.

Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians know this Labor government has tried to hoodwink them. Sell it how you like; Australians won't buy it. Every single day they are reminded their cost of living has been getting worse since Labor came to government. Their experience has been their disposable income falling as they grapple with the impact of Labor's homegrown inflation. You underestimated the common sense of Australians when they said no to your divisive, risky, failed Voice referendum, and they know your 'cost-of-living tax cuts' is fallacious—yes; untrue too. They know the phrase 'it won't be easy under Albanese' was not simply an election slogan. Your government's incompetence makes it their real, daily lived experience.

We all know low-income families are doing it really tough. Everyone is affected, and charities tell us people who are now reaching out for help are different to those they usually see. Foodbank reported 255,000 South Australian households went hungry in the year to October. That represents more than one-third of South Australian households. Fifty per cent of those seeking food relief were employed. They are the new working poor, made so by this Labor government. Australians are paying more for health, food, education, housing, transport, electricity, gas and insurance, and now they've exhausted their savings. While the Labor government was distracted by the Voice, they lost focus on the priorities of ordinary Australians. Now they are further distracted from the real issue when they should be focused on the symptoms of inflation.

Even with the tax cuts and rebates, South Australians remain about $20,000 worse off under the Albanese Labor government. Your $300 power rebate goes nowhere for them. South Australia has the nation's second-lowest average yearly earnings of about $70,000 a year. Today that means families paying an average new loan of $530,000 in South Australia, with an average interest rate of around six per cent, are losing half of that to mortgage repayments, desperate to keep their homes. Renters endured a 15 per cent jump in costs over the past year if they're renting a unit, and they're dreading renegotiating their leases. Families are making the choice between heating and eating every day and going to dangerous life-threatening extremes to keep warm. That's not a luxury.

One in five South Australians are seeking to use hardship provisions for their energy bills because they can't afford $60 a week for gas and electricity. So your one-off rebate goes nowhere. And they have some of the highest renewables mixes in the nation. Australians will take your rebate, but they know it really does nothing, and you know it too. You promised $275 cheaper power to attract votes at the 2022 election, and Australian families have seen none of that. What they've seen is their bills going higher and higher.

If you are one of the 400,000 South Australians who live in regional, rural or remote areas you're likely to have been doing it even tougher on just about everything. Under Labor, the bulk-billing rate is nearly 10 per cent lower than it was under the coalition government. And the South Australian Labor Party have just added to that pain by slapping a payroll tax on general practitioners. Under Labor, the health system in South Australia is about to get even sicker and cost more for patients.

South Australians battle the highest inflation rate in the nation, with the CPI rising 4.3 per cent in the 12 months to March 2024. It's now equal to the national rate of four per cent, which is not really a gain. If you're one of the 150,000 small businesses employing 300,000 South Australians, it's getting hard to even afford to keep the doors open. The cost of doing business is getting higher by the day. Hundreds of SA companies were liquidated in the past financial year, and that doesn't count those who just shut up shop, their dreams and aspirations shattered. From Melrose Park to hotels in the Adelaide CBD, business is down by up to 40 per cent. Business owners have shared that terrible picture of uncertainty with me. When South Australian businesses are going out of business, there are fewer jobs. There is less money in the economy and the situation is destined to just get worse.

While this government focuses on rebates and spending taxpayers' money, it's not addressing the real reason for inflation; nor is it addressing the cost of living. It might be a new financial year and you might be selling your message, but they ain't listening. This Labor government is offering nothing new in this new financial year, and Australians and South Australians know they can just expect worse.

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

Isn't it amusing to have those on the opposite side talking about the cost of living, lowering inflation and growing the economy. The characters across the way want to bring a nuclear fantasy into this country to reduce prices; it's actually going to increase prices for energy. When it comes to initiatives that we've done—households will receive the $300 rebate and small businesses will receive advantages—where are they? Crickets! They mean nothing. To everybody in the community that's receiving that $300, I congratulate you. Through our policies, we're fighting inflation not only by giving out the $300 rebate and supporting small business but also by having two surpluses.

When you talk about the challenges we have with the cost of living—we know there are challenges out there; people feel them every day—that's where the difference is between them and us. We know people feel the rising cost of living and we're taking action about it. Those opposite consistently vote against it on every occasion when there's an opportunity to fight the cost-of-living pressures, to give people an opportunity to put more money in their pockets to support themselves and their families. There are so many examples.

Even today, there is another way of dealing with the cost-of-living pressures, where 2.6 million people will get their third consecutive pay increase. This will mean $110 extra a week since Labor's been in office. The people opposite have never stood up for those people on the minimum wage. Look at the figures. I recall when Senator McKenzie said that the National Party represent those on the lowest incomes. But they vote against measures to help them. They don't support minimum wage increases. They vote against helping their own constituency to deal with the cost of living. They speak against the $300 household rebate. When it comes to things like fee-free TAFE, which builds a more sustainable and capable community—to get more training and education to boost productivity, to deal with inflation on multiple fronts and to give people an opportunity for the future—they vote against it. They speak against it. They say that training and educating more Australians and giving them opportunity is something we shouldn't be doing.

Those opposite have no plan for how to make this economy a better economy for everybody. We see the sorts of things that they're against. They're against a future made in Australia, a whole combination of opportunities that this country can grab a hold of in manufacturing, minerals and renewables in the new age. Where are they? Again, they're against it. They say no to minimum wage increases. They say no to turning around and having a future made in Australia. They say no to the tax rebates. But then they turn around and say nuclear energy is something they should implement—in 20 years time. Every reasonable economist, every reasonable thinking person who has dealt with this proposition and every independent mind has said that their proposition won't work. But, even if it were to work, it's in 20 years time. That's their cost-of-living response. It's something that we all know is going to cost $600 billion, five to six times more than renewables, and not give us the opportunities in this country that we can have right now.

It's clear that the opposition have no plan and are opposed to every solution that gives cost-of-living relief. There are 2.6 million workers who have got a third consecutive pay rise, which this government has supported and which the opposition always opposed in the past and continue to oppose. They're not about cost-of-living relief, they're not about building a better economy and they're not about a future made in Australia. They're about a very narrow-cast view about how this country could work, and their failures over the last 10 years prove it.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I support Senator Hughes's motion and agree that the Albanese Labor government has failed to grow the economy and, with that lack of growth, failed to restore Australia's standard of living. A stable economic environment is necessary for a new business to open and to flourish and for existing businesses to weather the many storms this government has engineered. Labor's interest rate rises are due directly to Labor's wasteful spending and energy price inflation resulting from pointless net zero policies. The Prime Minister and the energy minister, Minister Bowen, have failed to provide electricity at prices people and businesses can afford, directly driving inflation. Every new piece of legislation in this place seems designed to strangle the last breath out of businesses. Live sheep exports are today's casualty.

It should come as no surprise that data from ASIC shows there were 1,245 business insolvencies in May 2024. This is a 44 per cent increase on last year and a 122 per cent increase across the life of the Albanese Labor government. To put it simply, this government is sending business broke. One thousand two hundred and forty-five insolvent businesses in just one month is not a statistic; it's a human tragedy. These are everyday Australians who had a go at lifting themselves up, who were employing others in their community and who were paying tax to support the government agenda. Now their businesses are gone, along with their ability to provide for their families, free from reliance on the government. Business confidence is down because this government has talked it down with an unending recipe of doom and gloom about global boiling and sustainability requiring reductions in living standards. There's no hope in this message, just unending misery. It's a lie. No wonder businesses give up.

One Nation believes 'abundance' is not a dirty word. It's natural for people to seek abundance and to share abundance. With One Nation, Australians can and will restore prosperity to this beautiful country of ours.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll just remind everybody who is in the blessed state of listening to this debate of what we are currently arguing about in the Senate. It is:

Australia is in an entrenched home grown cost of living crisis, and the Albanese Labor Government has no economic plan to lower inflation, grow the economy, or restore Australia's standard of living.

I question what planet the Labor senators are on sometimes. It's clearly not planet Earth. Clearly there's something in the water supply in the Labor Party offices, because, for the last year, 18 months—funnily enough, ever since the Labor Party came to power—Australians have been suffering a cost-of-living crisis. It's only now that the Labor Party have woken up from whatever dreamlike state they exist in and worked out, 'Oh, hang on, Australians are doing it tough.' This is the Labor Party who wasted $450 million last year on a referendum that divided Australians. This is the Labor Party who failed to mention cost of living at all in the calendar year 2023.

It is only in this year, in the run-up to an early election—and for those who are listening, this building is full of rumours concerning Prime Minister Albanese not just doing a reshuffle but also heading off to see the new Governor-General for an early election—that, because the Labor Party are looking towards the electoral mathematics of winning the election, they are talking about the cost of living. This is the Labor Party who made all sorts of wild and wonderful promises before the last election about how they were going to help Australians. Then, the Labor Party got into power and promptly forgot about all those promises and instead focused on trying to divide Australians and wasting $450 million. The secretary of the Labor Party has clearly briefed the Prime Minister and the cabinet and said: 'Look, there's a cost-of-living crisis. You've got to do something about it.' Of course, we don't have a plan from the Labor Party; we have TikTok videos, memes, bumper stickers and emojis. We have a plethora of things that go ping, but we certainly don't have anything that will help Australians dealing with a cost-of-living crisis.

The inflation figures came out last week, and this is the type of stuff that should be keeping the policymakers and the decision-makers of Australia awake at night. Food has gone up 11.4 per cent, housing has gone up 14 per cent, rents have gone up 14.2 per cent, electricity is up 21.5 per cent, gas is up 22.2 per cent, health has gone up 11.1 per cent and education has gone up 10.9 per cent. This is what is happening to Australians. This is what is happening to everybody in Australia because of the decisions of the Labor Party.

This is where it comes into its own: the Labor Party aren't very good at running anything. They're pretty good at winning elections. They are the masters of the running the scare campaign. The Labor Party are the masters of spin, lies and deceit. They are good at that; they've written the book on that, and you can find it in your local library. What they're not good at, because they don't come from the business world, is understanding what drives inflation. The No. 1 thing that's driving inflation at the moment in Australia is government spending. This Labor Party is spending billions upon billions of dollars on really nothing at the moment, because they're not dealing with the underlying reasons around why everything costs so much. It is because of the decisions made by the Labor Party in their two years in office.

I hope that, in my home state of Queensland and across the country, if the Prime Minister does call an early election in August or September—or 7 December, which is what some cabinet ministers have been telling other people in this building—the Australian people can deliver their verdict on this poorly run government. They are a government led by a weak Prime Minister and a government who are not addressing the underlying issues impacting the Australian economy, but also, more worryingly, they have forgotten people. They've forgotten how tough it is—how tough Queenslanders are doing it at the moment. In Queensland we've got the double whammy of a state Labor government and a federal Labor government. On 26 October we're definitely going to get rid of Steven Miles and his mob.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator McGrath. The time for that discussion has expired.