MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Ms ALDRED (Monash—Opposition Whip) (15:44): I'm very pleased to rise to speak on this matter, because—having spent the last four or five weeks in my electorate, speaking with people in the Latrobe Valley, Bass Coast, South Gippsland and West Gippsland—one thing's clear: Australians have never worked harder for less and faced more challenges than they do right now.
It's been interesting to listen to the shopping list of self-congratulatory acclaim that members opposite have listed. I've got a couple more that perhaps they could consider addressing, which have gone on for far too long, including superannuation death benefit payouts—big super lagging in service standards. That's holding on to money that Australians have worked very hard for—that big super are not letting go of, not putting back where it belongs.
This government's taken 18 months of 'soon, soon—we're going to legislate soon', but we haven't seen anything yet, and Australians right across this country are suffering deeply because of that. On cuts to the private health rebate for older Australians, speaking to those in my electorate right now—they are making some very tough decisions. I was speaking with a lady who was telling me about her husband.
He's a bricklayer and a landscape gardener. He has worked very hard all his life. They don't have a great deal of income, but what they have they've worked hard for.
They've put away some money for private health care precisely because of the circumstances that they're looking at right now. The lady I was speaking with is really heartsick with worry right now because, under the cuts this government is looking at, she's not going to be able to afford that private health care going forward, and that is a great indictment of this prime minister.
The deliberate stoking of inflation is leaving Australian families to pay more at the supermarket, and there are a couple of points I want to pick up. Australia's economy is now heading towards its weakest run of growth since the 1990s. And, while the RBA left the cash rate unchanged this week, the downgrading of its labour productivity forecasts to a fall of 0.5 per cent for the rest of this year should be cause for concern.
AMP chief economist Shane Oliver has pointed to the massive public spending of the Labor government and referenced its impact on productivity. Tom Richardson, writing in the Nightly, notes the scale of this Labor government's spending, which has reached a record 28 per cent of gross domestic product, and he writes: The huge government spending is also contributing to the inflation that has outpaced wages growth since 2021.
Returning to the reference drawn by Shane Oliver, he says that consumer prices are up 25 per cent since 2021 but average wages are only up 19 per cent, and that is what Australians right across this country are staring at right now. Their rents are up—their mortgages, their cost of living, their gas bills. Electricity is up 40 per cent.
They cannot afford to live under this government and pay their bills every week. Indeed, the price we've seen at the supermarket shelves doesn't just start at the check-out; it starts at the paddock. In an electorate like mine of Monash, where we grow, make and manufacture products the rest of this country rely on—the best food and fibre across this nation—we see that every step of the journey from the paddock to the plate.
Our farmers are paying more to produce our food. Their fuel, fertiliser, fodder and freight are among the biggest costs of running a farm, and those costs remain painfully high. Their margins are being shrunk, and everyday Australians are paying more at the check-out thanks to the mismanagement, overregulation and reckless disregard of this government.
We have to make sure that our farmers, locally, are able to get their produce off the farm, and to do that means trucks. And, to drive those trucks, they need diesel, and they need freight. In an electorate the size of Monash, that often means transporting our food along roads that are riddled with potholes, crumbling at the edges and desperately in need of investment.
I couldn't give you a better example than one this week. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis where people can least afford to have to shell out for repairs and extra equipment, we had an absolute doozy along the Princes Highway in west Gippsland, with the heavy— (Time expired)