Zaneta Mascarenhas MP
House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra
Matters of Public Importance
I think it is a bit odd that the opposition would like to talk about a lack of policy to deal with the rising cost of living. Just two days ago the shadow minister for finance, Senator Hume, on ABC breakfast TV, explained that the coalition doesn't have policies. The pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stop and imagine a better future for Australia and to step up and implement policies to increase the resilience of the nation and prepare for an uncertain future. The previous government had 30 attempts to create a coherent energy policy. The number of successful policies implemented: zero. That inaction has a cost. The so-called gas-led recovery was indeed an oxymoron. Over $2.7 billion was allocated towards the recovery, and how much was contractually committed? It was $0.8 billion; $1.9 billion was not formally committed. When the opposition claimed to have a plan for economic growth, what they actually had was an announcement. The lack of decent energy policy has meant that the national energy market was horribly exposed by energy price shocks caused by the war in Ukraine and the pandemic. It meant that those prices rose and were worn by businesses and households.
We have a plan to reduce people's power bills by increasing renewables in the grid by 82 per cent by 2030. This will help insulate electricity prices against supply shocks. As the Minister for Climate Change and Energy said, while the sun shines and the wind blows it won't be sending us a separate invoice. Also, the sunshine and the wind don't care if there is a dictator on an unjustified power trip.
Today Labor has introduced a bill that is truly transformative: an early childhood education policy. In my electorate of Swan almost 7,000 families will be better off under our increases to the childcare subsidy. A family on a combined income of $120,000 with one child in early childhood education could be $1,700 better off under our policy. This will mean more money for families and a greater ability for lead parents, who are often women, to increase their time in the paid workforce. Where was the opposition's policy on women re-entering the workforce? I know that the coalition has had a woman problem in the past. I recall a previous prime minister, the former member for Warringah, remarking that it was the housewives of Australia who were doing the ironing. Maybe that is still the view held by those opposite and that's why we have had a lack of policies aimed at reducing the cost of early childhood education and at assisting women to increase their hours in the paid workforce. In case the coalition didn't get the memo, women want more, and this is why we see so many women on the crossbench.
To credit Senator Hume, the coalition had some policies—they had a deliberate policy of keeping wages low. The former finance minister, Senator Mathias Cormann, said that low wages are 'a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture'. In our first week, this government acted to raise the minimum wage—it rose by 5.2 per cent. After listening to the feedback at the Jobs and Skills Summit, we introduced the pensioner work bonus to ensure that older Australians can keep more of what they earn without it affecting their pension. Our government will also ensure that wage growth will be improved through productivity. We're fast-tracking fee-free places at TAFE to improve the skills of our workforce.
Central to our Jobs and Skills Summit is a plan to process our nation's productivity to benefit all. After nine years of a do-nothing government, three prime ministers and a prime minister with five secret ministries, productivity wasn't really a part of the agenda. They didn't know (a) how to be a productive government or (b) how to make our nation more productive. So, of course, under the last government, we saw a deep decline in productivity. We know that, when productivity rises, so should wages. The Labor government has a plan to address the cost-of-living pressures. I know this because every day I'm in this place and I'm seeing bills being introduced and passed that will make a real-world difference for millions of Australians and tens of thousands of people in the constituency of Swan.
