Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026
Ms ALDRED (Monash) (12:39): In the fourth year of his government, we see a prime minister who says he's focused on delivering for all Australians and repaying and rebuilding the trust they placed in his government at the election. We have a prime minister who also says that many of the economic opportunities our nation has begin in regional Australia. The politest thing I can muster about these empty platitudes is that Moe is a long way from Marrickville.
I'm here to speak and ask questions on behalf of the people of Monash, whom the Prime Minister has disappointed and ultimately left feeling let down by a government that understands neither them nor their aspirations for themselves, their families, their community or their businesses. Today in the parliament we are considering the appropriation bills. These provide the authority for the federal government to spend your money on what has been budgeted for and what has been promised since.
Budgets and spending are, ultimately, revealing of the priorities of a government, and what the people of Monash have seen from this Prime Minister is a man who has all of the wrong priorities. Having reviewed his budget and all of his promises, I ask the Prime Minister: is he spending for the future prosperity of all Australians, including those I have the honour of representing, or is he spending only for the future prosperity of his own prime ministership?
Budgets are a helpful way to assess the performance of a federal government because they are very real and direct in the consequences they have for families, small businesses, farmers, volunteers and sporting clubs in my electorate of Monash. I ask the Prime Minister: can he tell anyone in my electorate of Monash that they are better off under his government than before they were three and a half long years ago?
This government is not doing a good job, and that is showing up locally. From the power station worker taxed so high that there is a disincentive to take on some extra weekend overtime because there's literally no reward for effort, to all of the farmers who are forgotten and the volunteer organisations regulated to the ends of the earth, these things matter in Monash.
From Wonthaggi to Moe, Drouin to Korumburra, Inverloch to Cowes, Leongatha to Warragul, people are raising the human consequences of the government's mismanagement of our economy every day of the week with me. Beyond just my electorate of Monash, Australians are not thriving. In fact, many are suffering right now.
We have never been less united. We have never been more divided. I ask the Prime Minister: can he tell anyone in Monash that they are members of a stronger community today than before this government came to office?
Recently, the Australian newspaper revealed that a child sex offender, anonymised in court records as Hilary Maloney, received a sentence of four years and nine months, with a non-parole period of two-and-a-half years. Maloney was arrested for filming the abuse of a girl inside a Melbourne home in 2023, producing 77 separate files of child abuse material. This is the most horrendous offending.
This is a five-year-old child victim who will wear these scars for the rest of her life. As Anthony Galloway in the Australian reported: While Maloney was convicted of one state charge and two commonwealth offences—the production and transmission of child abuse material—the commonwealth charges together attracted a sentence of just six months. The coalition has offered the government the opportunity to fix this with draft legislation, to make sure it never happens again.
The shadow Attorney-General, my colleague Julian Leeser, wrote to the Attorney-General. He said: … we have an opportunity to act at the commonwealth level to prevent similar outcomes in respect of commonwealth child sex offences. Mr Leeser's bill would have included mandatory sentences of five years for the production and transmission of child abuse material.
I ask the Prime Minister: can he tell anyone in Monash that they are safer today than before this government came to office? The Prime Minister offered cheaper power prices, and he's let us down on that as well. Australians deserve better.