MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Ms ALDRED (Monash—Opposition Whip) (15:58): This Friday is 3 July, and it is the 12-month anniversary of the swearing-in of the class of 2025. It is a momentous occasion for that class among us. One of the things I've enjoyed most over the last 12 months is going around to schools and talking to them about our system of government, about democracy and about why we have the best system anywhere in the world.
One of those features is the accountability and transparency of functions like question time where you can make the Prime Minister of the day accountable on a range of things. I have to say, the preening, the back-patting and the smirking that's been on display from this Prime Minister every single day this week and every other week while Australians in my electorate suffer causes me to say that people deserve so much better.
I'll give you a couple of examples. I've got a constituent right now who's living with her abuser in fear because leaving means she will be separated from her special needs son and pets, and she cannot afford to move out. There are a couple living in a tent in a stranger's driveway in my electorate, and they cannot afford anywhere to rent on their $450-per-week budget.
There's an elderly couple in South Gippsland who can't afford to turn on their heating. When support workers visit, they're offered a blanket and the couple apologise for how cold it is in their house. There's a woman in my electorate who's separated from her partner and needs to live in the same house while she waits for Centrelink and child support to process her payments.
This is not good enough. She's relying on food bank payments to get by at the moment because she can't afford to eat. For all the smirking and the back-patting and the preening that this prime minister carries on with, Australians right now deserve so much better from their government.
Look at health. After two decades of progressing private health insurance as a more affordable way for older Australians, the cut to the private health rebate has hurt these people deeply. More than three million Australians over the age of 65 have health insurance.
More than 900,000 of these Australians live on less than $55,000. They are not wealthy. They have worked hard.
They have saved hard. They have done the right thing. They have tried to take some burden off the system, and goodness knows that right now our hospitals are bursting at the seams thanks to state and federal Labor government mismanagement.
These people deserve better, and the cut to the health insurance rebate will hurt these people. It will burden our public hospitals. I go to the CFMEU.
The corruption in Victoria has cost taxpayers at least $15 billion. Sarah Ferguson on the ABC asked the Prime Minister a pretty straightforward question. She asked him whether he had requested of the Premier of Victoria any assurances that Commonwealth funding on infrastructure projects wasn't going to organised crime.
I asked the Prime Minister in question time, and he was evasive again—more smirking, more, back-patting and more preening. On energy, between 2023 and June 2025, power costs surged 27 per cent above the consumer price index. I have families in my electorate who are staring at an energy bill stuck to their fridge, looking at the groceries they have to buy that week and making a decision on which one they're going to be able to pay, because they can't afford to pay for both.
These people deserve a serious Prime Minister. They deserve a serious government. They deserve better than jokes and snide remarks.
On inflation, we're sitting at four per cent. It's well outside the RBA's recommended band of two to three per cent. The previous governor, Philip Lowe, and many other people have said that this is a home-grown problem.
In other words, spending by government is driving much of this. At what point, after a few years of sitting well outside this recommended ban, are we going to have a serious national conversation about inflation and the impact that it's having on the cost of living? At what point do we just roll on for another couple of years under this government, with inflation bubbling along above that band?
Debt is about to pass $1 trillion. Look at the debt of Victoria, where I'm from—and I'm a proud, passionate Victorian; I love my state. Right now, Victoria's got a combined debt of more than— (Time expired)