MATTERS OF URGENCY

Senator ALLMAN-PAYNE (Queensland) (17:38): The Labor government is letting this cost-of-living crisis happen. Every time you're gouged at the supermarket or have to skip a meal, remember that Labor could make price gouging illegal. If your landlord raises your rent, remember that Labor could have frozen it.

If you're living on welfare payments that are below the poverty line, remember that Labor could raise the rate at any time. Every time there is a choice to be made between investor returns and ordinary people, the Labor Party chooses the corporations and the landlords—every single time. That's because students, pensioners and working-class renters don't give massive donations to the Labor Party like their corporate masters do.

But the irony is that this motion was introduced by One Nation, who take the same money and serve the same interests. One Nation would like us to think of them as outsiders, but they will continue the same corporate friendly policies as Labor and the Liberals. When the Greens put forward our policy for a rent freeze, One Nation didn't think about the needs of renters.

They instead worried about the rights of property investors. One Nation couldn't even be bothered to turn up to vote for a bill to ban supermarket price gouging, because, when it comes to cost of living, One Nation are just more of the same. They're blaming migrants and diverse communities for this crisis when the truth is that it's their friends at the big end of town who are the ones to blame.

This cost-of-living crisis is just a convenient time for One Nation to push the same backwards-looking rubbish they've been pushing for decades. One Nation can dress it up however they like, but that's what they care about, not you and whether you can put food on your table. The big corporations know the Australian people have realised that the Labor and Liberal parties are old news, so they're putting their money behind their new mouthpiece, One Nation.

Don't buy the spin.