PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (11:45): It could be, maybe, as we move into September, nearing the end of footy season and looking forward to cricket season, why it's a cricket analogy that I came up with when I read the title of this motion. I feel like the poor member for Fisher has had a ball handed to him by the member for Bowman that's not easy to bowl—as much as when I read the title of this motion, I thought, 'This is going to be, in cricket terms, a bit of a lollipop.' There's going to be a chance to hit this one over the fence.
Unfortunately, when I read the detail of the motion, it was more reminiscent of that famous John Howard bowl, in Pakistan, when he bowled to the diggers and it bounced 10 times in front of him and then slowly dribbled off the pitch. I think that the member for Fisher has been handed a ball where I'd be asking for another ball, because, when you read this motion, it is really almost laughable.
It's almost as if they're having a bit of a lend to come up with this one: delivering lower taxes, lower power prices and more housing! I am just incredulous that that they could come into this place and try and talk about their record on lower taxes. They were led by an opposition leader that was going to the last election with higher taxes, mind you, and that was pushing a policy to go to nuclear, which is still their policy, by the way; they just haven't talked about the fact that private enterprise aren't going to back it.
Are we going to be landed again with that $600 billion bill? They had a leader that presided over a government that built something like 373 public housing dwellings over the nine years that they were in government. So I am a bit incredulous that they could come to the House with this motion.
Another element of this motion is this: … supports the Opposition's plan to put Australians first by: (a) managing the budget responsibly; (b) paying down debt; and (c) investing in Australia's future … I'm very much reminded of my own experience in business. I very much love the saying that you can run a country like you run a business. There are two ways that you can run a business.
One of them is to invest in your plant and your people, and the other is to strip the profits out and run it into the ground. I think that what we saw from the last 30 years of mainly coalition rule was a failure to invest in our people and a failure to invest in our industrial capacity that have really created this cost-of-living crisis, which has been exacerbated by two overseas wars and a pandemic.
That showed that everything works until it doesn't. Just as the Liberal Party dared the car industry to leave, it is also that they oppose the sorts of interventions that this government is taking in the economy to protect our industrial base, whether it's steel in Whyalla or aluminium in Gladstone and in Tomago, whether it is lead and zinc in Port Pirie or whether it is copper in Mount Isa and Townsville.
When you talk about investing in Australia's future, this government's actual record of what it is doing really speaks to the failure of the movers of this motion, and the supporters of this motion, who have left Australia with the economic problems that we have today. Finally, calling on the government to 'adopt practical policies' that 'back workers and small business'—how about backing a pay rise?
They failed to do that in all the years that they were in government, yet this government has backed pay rises so that we have seen the national minimum wage increase by more than $12,000 per year. That is basically a 12 per cent real wage increase for lowest-paid workers. Plus, we're strengthening our superannuation system by actually delivering on the increase to 12 per cent and backing it through Payday Super as well.
The idea of those opposite calling on the government to back Australian workers and small business is really, frankly, contemptible. And so it is here, on the Monday of this final September sitting, that we're faced with a motion which, unfortunately, has hit the pitch in front of the bowler and dribbled slowly off the pitch. I think the member for Bowman owes the member for Fisher a big— (Time expired)