CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr BIRRELL (Nicholls) (17:51): My constituents are telling me that the economy is not working for them and that the way of life that they once enjoyed seems to be slipping away, and I think that's the story across Australia. But, fortunately, the coalition has a plan to fix that economy and protect that way of life. The first part of that plan is, of course, lower taxes.

We believe people know how to spend their money better than the government. Whilst there does need to be taxation, it should be as low as possible, and people should have the opportunity to keep what they earn. I think that, when you go out into the community and canvass the concept of bracket creep, people are incredibly surprised that governments do really, really well as inflation gets higher and more of people's income is moved into the higher tax brackets.

A key part of our plan will be telling people about this bracket creep and telling people how we are going to index those brackets and therefore have a tax-back guarantee. Our economy runs on energy. We are a globally competitive nation, but that is slipping away if we don't have affordable and reliable energy.

Whilst it's true we want to use technology as much as we can to reduce emissions, we need to make sure that we are competitive with the world in the way that we have energy available for our industry. I've got food processing across my electorate. Indeed, manufacturing across Australia needs cheaper and more available energy.

Migration has been a huge success for Australia and will continue to be, and nowhere is it more beneficial than in my electorate of Nicholls, but we do need to make sure that the rate of migration is sustainable and that the housing supply keeps up with it. That way, we keep the social licence for the wonderful migration programs we'll have. So we will have lower migration, and it will be tied to how many houses we can build.

For our industries to thrive, we need infrastructure and jobs, so we'll be building that productivity-lifting infrastructure. A great example in my electorate was the Echuca-Moama Bridge over the Murray River, which has significantly improved transport between those two towns. Our policies are going to be really family friendly, because we want to grow Australia, grow families and make sure that we have the opportunity for people to bring new people into the world, have them educated and have them find a home here and a place in our economy.

That's our plan: fix our economy and protect our way of life.