Michael Sukkar MP

Adjournment Debate: Cost of Living

It is clear that after 18 months of this Labor government, Australians are worse off. Australians are worse off in a number of ways, because this is a government and a Prime Minister who is distracted, a Prime Minister whose priorities are completely wrong and a Prime Minister who, in question time each and every day, thinks that things have never been better for the Australian people and that they should be very grateful for what he has delivered them.

What has this government delivered in 18 months? What we’ve seen in the last 18 months is the cost-of-living crisis get worse and worse by the day. This was the Prime Minister who said before the election that he was going to reduce energy prices by $275 a year. He said that 97 times before the election and yet has not chosen to make that promise—to repeat that promise or repeat that statement—even once since the election. Why? Because we’ve seen electricity costs increase by 18 per cent. We’ve seen gas prices increase by 28 per cent. Every single Australian who goes to the supermarket or fills up at the bowser is seeing prices growing exponentially. Even before the election, the Prime Minister made a solemn commitment to Australians that life would be better under him. Indeed, he made the ill-fated promise of delivering cheaper mortgages. He even said to the Australian people before the election that he would deliver cheaper mortgages! What have we seen since then? We’ve seen 12 rate rises on his watch. We’ve seen the average Australian now paying $24,000 more per year in mortgage repayments than when this Prime Minister was elected. Indeed, we see data out of the OECD that shows disposable income for Australian families has dropped by 5.1 per cent, which is the highest drop of any developed nation in the world. So we’re leading the leaderboard of a reduction in disposable income, a leaderboard that Australians do not want to lead but are leading under this Prime Minister.

And what has he been doing for the last 18 months? He has been wandering around the world and the Prime Minister has been spending huge amounts of time and energy on his Voice referendum proposal. We can all think back to those optimistic days of the Prime Minister holding a press conference with Shaquille O’Neal. Shaquille O’Neal was going to be the man who was going to be his secret weapon. Perhaps the Prime Minister can go and get some advice from Shaquille O’Neal on how on earth he delivers his promises to reduce power prices, to deliver cheaper mortgages and to make life easier for Australians. This Prime Minister has utterly failed on every single measure, and after 18 months Australians, quite frankly, realise they cannot afford a Labor government. I think that Australians have had doubts for a long time. Can we afford Labor governments?

They’ve seen quite directly that not only is their disposable income down but that in a material sense they’re poorer now than they were 18 months ago, and that things are likely to get worse. Why? Because the Labor Party don’t know how to manage an economy. The Labor Party are a party of vested interests. They basically work through the list of requests from their union paymasters, who handpick them and who put them into parliament, and then give them the list that they need to work through after the election.

They are completely out of touch with ordinary, everyday Australians. We see on a daily basis that the senior leadership of the Labor Party are very comfortable at dinner parties and very comfortable strutting red carpets—very comfortable in those forums—but not when it comes to understanding the pressures on the Australian people. Nothing is more galling than when the Prime Minister is asked questions about these things—when he is invited to repeat his promise of delivering a $275 energy reduction, or to repeat his promise that he was going to deliver cheaper mortgages—and he sits there at the dispatch box with a supercilious smile, as if Australians have never had it better. Well, Prime Minister, Australians are suffering. Start focusing on the things that matter to everyday Australians.

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