MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator BELL (New South Wales—One Nation Whip) (17:23): I move: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The need for the Albanese Labor Government's to address its failure to fix the cost-of-living crisis, under which the price of basic staples like milk and bread, everyday groceries, petrol at the bowser, gas for heating and electricity to keep the lights on continues to rise, forcing working families, pensioners and small business owners across Australia to cut back on essentials, skip meals and choose between paying for food, fuel or power, and the need to deliver immediate relief for Australians just trying to meet their most basic needs.
The bad Albanese Labor budget passed this week. Australian families are not sitting around the kitchen table and celebrating it. They are looking at the bills in front of them, the grocery receipt and the petrol gauge.
They are looking at the power bills, the rent notice, the mortgage repayment and the insurance renewal, and they know the truth: Labor's tax and spend policies are making our country poorer and are making our families poorer. Across this country people are paying more just to keep a household running. A generic brand two-litre bottle of milk is listed at $3.55.
A two-litre bottle of Norco full cream milk is more than $5. A loaf of Tip Top or Wonder White, the bread millions of families actually buy every week, is now $4.70. The cost of basics goes up while Labor raises taxes, punishes businesses and spends more.
Aussies know that this is driving inflation. After years of rising bills, rising rents, rising power prices, rising grocery costs and rising mortgage pressure, the Albanese Labor government want a victory lap when they should be doing a walk of shame. Labor has lost touch with the cost of everyday life.
Increasingly, everyday life for millions of hardworking Australians looks like this: a mum putting things back on the supermarket shelf, a worker filling the car with just enough to get through the week, a pensioner leaving the heater off for longer than they should. It's a small-business owner opening another bill and wondering which staff member to cut or even if they can afford to go on.
Food is up three per cent, dairy is up five per cent, electricity is up 21 per cent, petrol is up eight per cent and will go up again from today as Labor pulls the plug on fuel excise, rents are up 3.6 per cent, insurance is up 5.5 per cent and housing costs are up 6.5 per cent over the year. For mortgage holders, the comparison is even more brutal. Just one more rate rise would add $114 a month to the average mortgage.
Is there any doubt that Labor spends more and more of taxpayers money, and is it any wonder that they need to raise another $77 billion in tax from this bad budget? Australians are angry because they can see what Labor is doing and they are watching their bank accounts getting drained while Labor wants credit for a big new tax grab. Working families are doing what they have always done: They are working hard, paying tax, raising children and doing the right thing.
But they now feel they are running faster just to fall further behind. Pensioners face a particularly cruel version of this crisis. A pensioner can't simply pick up another shift because the gas bill has jumped.
They have spent their lives working, paying taxes, raising families and contributing to this country, and now many are being forced to make choices no Australian pensioner should have to make. Small business owners are being squeezed from both directions. They are being hit by the same household bills as everyone else, and then they are hit again through their business.
Power, rent, insurance, transport, stock, wages, compliance and borrowing costs all feed into the pressure. At the same time, customers have less money to spend. And then, one day, the door closes and a community loses a shop, a cafe, a service, a sponsor and an employer—precisely what happened yesterday, in South Bowenfels, to the Triple 8 Cafe and to Yancoal, in the Hunter, which axed 60 jobs.
Australians need a government that puts Australians first. They need a government that puts Australian households ahead of global agendas and woke ideology, a government that will address the heart of what's driving inflation and scrap net zero—the obsession that is driving up power prices. Australians are not asking for luxury; they are asking to be able to afford the ordinary essentials of life—food, fuel and power in the home.
All they ask is that they are left with enough money to spend so they have the ability to live with dignity. That should be the first responsibility of government, to be patriotic enough to say Australians come first. Our resources should power Australian homes.
Our farmland should feed Australian families before it's locked up because of climate regulations to satisfy international bureaucrats. Our economy should serve Australian workers, families and small businesses not the interests of foreign climate targets, activist causes and political fashions. That is what building an Australia for Australians means—a country where young people can afford a home, families can afford the weekly shop, pensioners can turn on their heaters without fear and small businesses can keep their doors open.
It means putting the national interest back at the centre of every decision. One Nation stands up for working Australians, pensioners, small-business owners, and those who are sick of the lies, sick of the spend and sick of the arrogance of this Prime Minister and this Labor government. One Nation says Australian households deserve a government that puts them first.