CANBERRA - 25 November 2021

Mr Speaker,

We’re living through a once-in-a-century global pandemic, causing the greatest amount of inequality we’ve ever seen in this country.

And instead of improving the lives of Australians, those opposite have been making things worse.

Look at housing affordability – it’s never been worse, many young people will never be able to afford a home, and the Government’s own policies have let that happen.

They won’t do anything to help the next generation put a roof over their children’s heads.

Under eight long years of this tired old Government, we’ve seen wages go backwards. Not even stay the same, but actually reverse.

They’ve gone backwards $700 a year, while fuel prices have gone up $900 a year.

The interests of hardworking everyday Australians who are feeling this hard in their back pockets have never been of less interest to those opposite.

They stuffed up the vaccine rollout unimaginably all year, leading to months-long lockdowns for most of the country, causing unimaginable suffering to people and to businesses.

And meanwhile, they failed to manage JobKeeper properly, cutting it off too soon while putting hundreds of millions of dollars in the coffers of big businesses making record-breaking profits.

Let’s not forget that they’re refusing to ask those same businesses to repay that huge windfall in a time of crisis, while at the same time pursuing vulnerable individuals through Centrelink.

They’re asking pensioners in their 90s to prove that they should be getting the pension.

They’re telling workers that they were overpaid JobSeeker or JobKeeper and demanding they repay it, all while keeping them away from their jobs due to endless lockdowns – lockdowns we had to have because they had utterly failed to protect Australians with proper quarantine facilities, or by properly managing the vaccine rollout.

Let’s not forget those who died due to the Government’s unlawful pursuit of them with the Robodebt scandal.

We’re yet to see a single Minister take responsibility for that tragedy. Probably because it was the Prime Minister himself who oversaw it. And we know that as far as he’s concerned, every mistake he makes is someone else’s fault.

Misinformation not only thrives on the benches opposite, but they’ve done nothing at all to protect First Nations Australians from the life-threatening, dangerous misinformation flourishing in our remote communities.

Where, I’d add, they’ve also stuffed up the communication around the vaccine rollout, not bothering to translate crucial information into enough languages.

Now they’re doing nothing to stamp out the malicious spreaders of misinformation who are preying on those communities.

It’s a disgrace.

Now we know that those opposite have got no problem being profligate with taxpayers’ money.

It’s a slur they like to sling at Labor, but the truth is while the quality of life has gone backwards and the cost of living has gone up for most Australians, those opposite have presided over an outrageous abuse and misuse of public money.

The rorting has been outrageous. The sports rorts. Carpark rorts. Endless pork-barrelling of marginal seats. The million-dollar blind trust paying the legal bills of the former Attorney-General, which they say they don’t have a problem with.

Couldn’t be anything to do with why they’ve been fighting so hard – for more than 1,000 days – to not bring in a real National Anti-Corruption Commission.

Well done to the Member for Bass for crossing the floor on that one.

Now we’ve got a Prime Minister who’s using dangerous doublespeak to pander to the far right who were protesting in Melbourne.

The same Prime Minister who said of peaceful protesters for #MeToo that they should feel lucky they weren’t shot.

Now this tired, infighting, eight-year-old Government are coming after charities. They’re coming after class actions.

And they’re introducing a voter suppression bill that will disenfranchise so many vulnerable Australians who have a right to vote, while making it incredibly inconvenient for every other Australian voter to do the same.

They’ve never had the interests of Australians at heart.

It’s plain to see.

Australians need to just look at their record next election and turf them out.

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ENDS