ADJOURNMENT
Mr FRENCH (Moore) (19:55): There is an old saying that, if you repeat something often enough, people will eventually accept it as fact. These days, that appears to be the business model of large sections of the political commentary industry—not journalism and not analysis but commentary. Every budget, every reform and every proposal is pushed through the same narrow filter.
If working people benefit, it is somehow irresponsible; if investors receive a tax concession, it is somehow economic genius. If wages go up, it is inflationary; if profits go up, it is market efficiency. If government attempts to deal with problems that have been building for decades, we are told civilisation itself is on the edge of collapse.
The reality is less dramatic. Budgets involve choices. Governments have a responsibility not to the next headline but to the next generation, and Australians deserve better than a permanent panic campaign from people who often have a direct interest in nothing changing.
If housing remains unaffordable, some people make money. If wages remain suppressed, some people make money. If inequality grows, some people make money.
When the government tries to change those outcomes, we are suddenly told the sky is falling while those people who make money shoot themselves into the sky. This budget reflects a simple principle: Australia should remain a country where hard work is rewarded, where a young person can realistically aspire to own their own home, where wages grow, where public service remains strong and where opportunity is not reserved for those fortunate enough to already have wealth.
That is the Australia I believe in. I was an apprentice electrician, I've worked on construction sites in the resources sector and in labour hire, I've been a publican, I went to university, and I studied law and worked in an industrial office at an employment lawyer. That is what Australia is supposed to be, not 'the lucky country' where people usually use that phrase.
The author never intended it as a compliment. Australia succeeds when it is the land of opportunity—a country where people can reinvent themselves and a country where your starting point does not determine your destination. That is worth protecting.
In Western Australia, we are seeing a familiar political cycle emerge. The Liberal Party has discovered hospitals! The Liberal Party has discovered schools!
The Liberal Party has discovered public services! Apparently, every problem can be solved with a new building, a new announcement and an artist's impression, but hospitals do not operate themselves, schools do not teach themselves, buildings are not health care, and buildings are not education, people are. The challenge facing Western Australia is not only infrastructure, it is workforce.
You can announce a hospital every week, if you like, but where are the doctors coming from? Where are the nurses coming from? Where are the allied health workers coming from?
Where are the teachers coming from? Where are the electricians, plumbers and construction workers coming from? Last time I checked, none of those professions could be manufactured in a press release.
They require training, they require investment, and they require decent wages and decent conditions, yet the same political movement now promising miracles spent decades attacking both. Western Australians remember wage suppression, they remember privatisation, they remember outsourcing, and they remember being told that private operators could somehow deliver better services while paying workers less.
That theory never quite survived contact with reality. Whenever conservatives speak warmly about efficiency, workers have learned to check whether their pay packet is about to become more efficient as well. There is a broader lesson in the politics of grievance.
If you spend years telling people that institutions cannot be trusted, eventually, they stop trusting yours. If you spend years telling people that every reform is a conspiracy, eventually, conspiracy becomes your policy platform. If you spend years feeding anger, eventually, someone else harvests it.
Many Australians are genuinely worried. They are worried about housing, they are worried about the cost of living, and they are worried about whether their children will have the same opportunities they had. Those concerns are real, and they deserve respect, but concern is not a policy, anger is not a plan, and slogans are not solutions.
Australia faces serious challenges: housing affordability, skills shortages, health workforce shortages, productivity, energy transition and defence capability. They require serious responses, not memes, not outrage and not slogans. We cannot assume the opportunities available to the previous generations will automatically remain for the next.
They will not without action, without reform and without political courage. Question agreed to. House adjourned at 20: 00