Rick Wilson
O'Connor · Liberal Party · Australia
“Instead, it is being used to maintain primary health services that are a Commonwealth responsibility. Last week the Local Government Rural Health Funding Alliance hosted a workshop here in Canberra, with more than 30 councils from across Australia coming together with the Australian Local Government Association, the National Rural Health…”
“For many seniors in O'Connor, the cost of seeing a doctor is becoming almost as painful as the diagnosis. I'm running a survey of constituents aged over 65 and have heard from many people who are doing everything they can just to make ends meet only to find they pay more just to access the health care they deserve.”
“As the federal representative of 47 rural, regional and remote shire councils, I rise today to highlight an inequity that should concern all levels of government and all Australians.”
“These are the very councils least able to absorb those costs. The alliance's workshop revealed many more councils paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars per year covering housing, vehicles, medical premises, staff, locum doctor cover and even utilities.”
“But, in the bush, this Labor government expects some of the smallest and most financially constrained councils to carry a responsibility that lies with them. Meanwhile, these same communities see a Medicare underspend of around 50 per cent per person of what is spent on a city dweller.”
“For seniors in O'Connor, health care is becoming less affordable and harder to access. In regional Western Australia, a hospital is not just down the road, and specialist care can be hundreds of kilometres away, yet today there is still not one single urgent care clinic anywhere in my 1.1 million kilometre electorate, despite the Treasure…”
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“It provides grants of up to $750 for young athletes aged 12 to 18 competing at state, national or international championships. That's valuable support for those living in regional electorates like mine. For me, as a hockey dad myself, it was a pleasure to meet accomplished hockey players Jethro Wright and Bailey Cronin at the Wagin Woolorama recently. Jethro Wright of Mount Barker represented Western Australia at the State Schoolboys Under 15s National Hockey Championships held at the National Hockey Centre in Canberra last August. I also acknowledge Bailey Cronin, an even younger champion hockey player from Nippering. Bailey represented Western Australia at the School Sport Australia 12 Years and Under boys championship in Bendigo in Victoria last August.”
“I rise today to give a big shout-out to three local sporting champions from the electorate of O'Connor—Jethro Wright, Bailey Cronin and Aylah Chadwick—all of whom I caught up with recently. Their sporting achievements reflect not only their individual talent but also the commitment of their families, their coaches and their communities, who support them every step of the way. In regional Australia, participation in sport at an elite level comes with unique challenges. Long distances to competition venues, the rising costs of travel and accommodation, and time away from school and work all place significant pressures on young sporting champions' families. It's why the Local Sporting Champions grant program, delivered by the Australian Sports Commission, is so important.”
“Beyond agriculture, there are emerging threats to food supply, health services and emergency response capability, all of which depend on reliable fuel access. Regional Australians do not have the luxury of alternatives. Fuel is not optional in communities like Narembeen. It is fundamental to keeping people safe, keeping business operating and placing food on the table. The Shire of Narembeen survey highlights the ongoing failure by this federal Labor government to deliver meaningful fuel cost relief and to ensure reliable fuel supplies to regional Australia. Regional communities like mine deserve certainty of supply, fairness in pricing and guaranteed essential service provision—nothing less than their city cousins receive.”
“I rise today to make the House aware of the dire predicament of just one of the 46 local government authorities across my electorate of O'Connor. Rebecca McCall, CEO of the wheatbelt shire of Narembeen, has shared the results of their recent community survey. The survey confirms a rapidly worsening situation, with farmers, local business, essential workers and residents all reporting growing difficulty securing fuel, sharp price increases and escalating disruption to freight deliveries and essential services. For farmers, this could not come at a worse time. With recent rains, seeding is imminent, and uncertainty around fuel and fertiliser supply places production, productivity and long-term financial viability at risk.”
“It is absolutely vital, not just for those individual farm properties but for the economy of the Western Australian Wheatbelt that those farmers get access to that fertiliser.”
“When you get rain and urea, you grow more biomass—you get more yield, and that's what generates the profit. So, for farmers across my electorate, with such a good start, they would be looking at a similar year to last year, if they can get the urea, and that was a 27 million tonne crop across the Western Australian wheat belt. This year, CBH, the main grain handler in Western Australia, is estimating that, without that urea, the crop will be around 15 million tonnes. That's about a 45 per cent reduction in the crop if farmers can't get hold of that urea. I applaud the government, once again, for taking up the suggestion of cutting the fuel excise and the heavy-vehicle road user charge, but I urge them to take every step to ensure supplies of nitrogen for this year's crop.”
“But the ugly is very much the fertiliser situation. Seeding fertiliser, for the most part, is on farm—most farmers have received their seeding or planting fertiliser—and I think that the crop will go in in relatively good shape. The really disturbing and worrying situation is the nitrogen component of the crop. The most commonly used nitrogen fertiliser would be urea. Most of it comes out of the gulf, and my intelligence tells me that, of the 800,000 tonnes of urea required for this year's crop, about 100,000 is either here, onshore in Western Australia, or on the water. So that's about 700,000 tonnes of urea short. For those who are not familiar with crop agronomy, as the member for Grey certainly is, urea is what adds to the yield.”
“But the really good rainfall fell down in the western part of the Great Southern, in my home town of Katanning, with 46 millimetres, and Boyup Brook, with 44 millimetres. So it was an excellent start to the season for those areas. Of course, the bad is that fuel supplies are still very, very tight. Most farmers have been gradually filling their tanks. They've been ordering large volumes and getting small increments, and, hopefully, getting those storage tanks full. But, as of today, they'll be going flat out, and those large tractors and sprayers will use a thousand litres a day. Most farming operations would have three or four of them running, so they will plough through a lot of diesel in a very short period of time. Let's hope that they can keep that fuel up and keep the crop going in.”
“While there was some damage from Cyclone Narelle further north, particularly to the town of Exmouth and down through the Gascoyne, and to Carnarvon and other towns in that area that received some damage—and my very dear friend and colleague, the member for Durack, is back home with her communities as we speak, and I wish them all the best—the good that came out of that cyclone was a significant rain-bearing depression that travelled down through the southern part of the state, bringing some very useful rains across the agricultural region. Across my electorate, Quairading had 26 millimetres, which is a good start for them. Further east it was a little bit drier: Lake Grace had 19 millimetres; Narembeen had 15 millimetres.”
“So that is a very good outcome, not only for the people of O'Connor and the people of Grey—the member for Grey is sitting with me here tonight—but also the nation more generally. So I applaud the Prime Minister for picking up on a very good suggestion from the Leader of the Opposition. There was another good thing that happened over the weekend.”
“I rise tonight to update the House on the situation across the agricultural areas of my electorate of O'Connor. It's a case of the good, the bad and the ugly, but I'm going to start with the good. Last Friday, the Leader of the Opposition, Angus Taylor, wrote to the Prime Minister with a suggestion that the government cut fuel excise—or fuel tax—in half, which would immediately put 26c a litre back into the pockets of motorists. He also suggested that the heavy vehicle road user charge be scrapped temporarily, and that would save our trucking industry 32.4c a litre. I'm very pleased to say that the Prime Minister stood up today and announced that he was adopting that policy.”
“From what I can gather—and the details are a little bit scant at this stage—three years ago, this current government put negotiations on hold because they couldn't get a good deal for beef and lamb, but it would appear they've just rolled over, perhaps because the president was coming to Australia and they were desperate for some economic good news. They made an announcement that we'd agreed to a deal. It is a terrible deal; there is nothing in it for the farming community more broadly and particularly nothing in it for Western Australian sheep producers.”
“But the area that I am most disturbed and indeed angry about is lamb and mutton access to the European Union. The current government singled out the sheep farmers across my electorate of O'Connor for serious punishment when they closed down the live export trade. That took away the market for between 500,000 and a million animals per year in the live trade, and those animals will now have to be processed locally, despite the fact that we have abattoirs closing because of lack of throughput and lack of supply. Those abattoirs are closing, but the product they process will need to be marketed around the rest of the world. It was very important for the sheep farmers of O'Connor and, indeed, more broadly, Western Australia reeling from that decision around the live export trade that the government got a really good deal on chilled lamb.”
“The European Union was formed as a trading bloc post World War II and it has been designed to protect their farmers essentially—their farming communities. I understand the rationale for that. Post World War II, when hunger had been a very real issue across those European countries, they wanted to protect their farming communities, and they've done that now for 70-odd years. Going on the agreement that was reached between the Australian government and the European Union, they are still protecting their farmers, believe me. Let's get one example of dairy farmers and cheesemakers. European farmers receive a 30 per cent subsidy to produce cheese, and Australian farmers, of course, get no subsidy, but we have now given those 30 per cent subsidised farmers absolutely unfettered access to our market and got virtually nothing in return.”
“I know that farmers are getting ready for seeding. Let's hope that they have enough fuel and fertiliser to get those crops in when the rain comes. I'm looking forward to being back in the electorate tomorrow with my people if I can get a flight home, but, if not, I'll be driving to be there and be amongst the community when that cyclone arrives. Onto other events that happened in this place this week, we welcomed the President of the European Commission here. She gave an address about a whole range of things, including security and other issues. Briefly during that address, she touched on what was referred to as a free trade agreement. But, having looked at the agreement, I would think it's anything but free trade.”
“As we wrap up this week's parliamentary sittings and head home, us Western Australians are heading home to a state where a cyclone is tracking down the west coast. It is currently a level 3 cyclone a couple of hundred kilometres off the Pilbara coast and is forecast to track down through the Murchison Crossing around Denham then through the northern and the southern wheat belt of Western Australia. That will encompass a lot of communities that both the member for Durack and I represent. We are hoping and praying that everybody stays safe. The winds on Saturday are forecast to get up to around 70 kilometres an hour, which is hopefully not too damaging down in my part of the world, but I'm sure they'll be stronger further north, so let's hope that the damage is limited and that it does bring some serious rains for the wheat belt.”
“There is no other way to describe that. The majors are restricting the amount of fuel that they are allowing the independent distributors across my electorate of O'Connor to have on a daily basis.”
“That means that, if they've got a range of fuel stations, those fuel stations get 25 per cent. When the minister was asked by me in question time today, 'How many service stations have run out of fuel?' he reeled off, 'About 400,' but he said that six were in Western Australia. Those numbers are not up to date. What happens is that, if you're a service station, you're getting 25 per cent of your normal allocation. So you've got enough fuel to get going in the morning. When the minister answered that question, it was around midday in WA, and he said there were six service stations across WA that had run out of at least one type of fuel. I can guarantee you that by five o'clock this evening there will be over 100 service stations across my electorate that have run out of their 25 per cent allocation. That is fuel rationing.”
“Looking a bit further ahead, our farming community in the horticultural sector are currently harvesting. They are paying more for their fuel. The trucks to move that produce from, for example, Dom Della's farm at Pemberton to the potato packing plant in Perth—that's a three-hour, 300-kilometre haul. That is adding to the cost of those potatoes, and then they've got to be transported back out to the regions. These are the direct impacts that we're seeing now. I want to talk a little bit about petrol rationing, which has been discussed here today. The minister has kind of dismissed it as one of the many options on the table. But let me tell you: petrol rationing is happening today in my seat of O'Connor. What is happening is that independent fuel distributors are being cut back to as low as 25 per cent of their normal allocations.”
“What does that mean for the cost of living? For people that live in the electorate of O'Connor, their food, their groceries and their goods have to travel. If you live in Kalgoorlie, it's 600 kilometres from Perth by road. If you live in Esperance, it's 700 kilometres. If you live in Albany, it's 400 kilometres—413 to be exact. All of the trucking operators, because they have to—they have to make a living; they have to make a profit to keep their businesses viable—have put fuel surcharges on that freight. What we're starting to see now is the cost of goods on the supermarket shelf rising. That has a direct impact on people. Obviously when they go and fill up their cars at the service station, they're getting a $40 to $60 extra whack at that point on top of the interest rate rises that we've already talked about.”
“What that has led to is two hikes in interest rates by the Reserve Bank, which is impacting not only mortgage holders but also small business farmers and those in the mining community who are borrowing money, particularly in the contracting part of the industry. People are borrowing money to buy machinery and other plant equipment. Government spending is running at 40-year highs, at 28 per cent of gross domestic product, which is fuelling this inflation. We've heard that from the Governor of the Reserve Bank. I'll go back to O'Connor and where we're at today with the impact of the Middle East conflict. I was in the electorate on Friday. I was travelling over to Canberra over the weekend. Fuel prices for diesel, in particular, were well over $3 by that stage, and they've probably increased in the last day or two.”
“It gives me great pleasure to have the opportunity to speak on today's matter of public importance. The topic is the failure of the government to secure adequate fuel supplies, pushing up the cost of living across the economy. I want to bring it back to my electorate of O'Connor and how that's impacting there, but I first want to go back to where we were at the start of the Middle East conflict that we're currently experiencing. That was the December quarter. Inflation was up, running at 3.8 per cent nationally, but in Western Australia that number was 4.9 per cent. We were already running at nearly five per cent inflation in O'Connor prior to the Middle East conflict and prior to the almost doubling of fuel prices. I would suspect that across my electorate of O'Connor those numbers would be slightly higher.”
“My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. On 10 March 2026, the minister stated: … the fact of the matter is we have enough diesel in Australia for our needs for the foreseeable future … And it's important that government and industry are working together … Can the minister advise the House as to how many service stations in each state and territory are currently out of fuel?”
“Fast forward to last week when I visited Manjimup and met Emily and Mark of Youth Focus for a briefing on the new headspace set to open mid-year. Dr Youngson sits on the board and will practice there, delivering free youth-friendly mental health care in the region. headspace management will work hand in glove with other local GPs and existing community volunteer organisations like Blackwood Youth Action. I close by thanking Dr Sarah Youngson for her drive in creating Blackwood Youth Action and for her vision for a local headspace and congratulate her on her well-deserved accolade of Community Health Professional of the Year.”
“Sarah presented compelling evidence of the need for local youth mental health support and the latent mental health workforce in the region that could service a headspace. This resonated with me both as a parent and as a local federal MP, having witnessed the impact headspace has had in the Goldfields-Esperance and Great Southern regions of O'Connor. I also knew of the socioeconomic reality of the southern forests, with many communities experiencing unemployment and uncertainty due to the transition away from the native forest and timber milling industry that had sustained them for many generations. On her behalf, I made representation to the federal health minister, Mark Butler, and the WA Primary Health Alliance, outlining the demonstrable need and local capacity to deliver these services.”
“She exemplifies that progress comes through collaboration between health professionals, schools, community organisations and families. That collaborative spirit is embodied in services like Blackwood Youth Action, which Dr Youngson helped establish and chairs. BYA has been a cornerstone of youth wellbeing in the Warren-Blackwood, providing counselling, outreach and practical support for young people aged 12 to 25. I first met Dr Youngson in 2021 when BYA secured a Commonwealth volunteers grant for their op shop, which was their main income stream at that time. She advised me that BYA had recently failed in their bid for funding through the WA Mental Health Commission, but she had a vision for something like a headspace in the Warren-Blackwood.”
“I rise today to acknowledge one of O'Connor's most dedicated health professionals, Dr Sarah Youngson, who was recently awarded Community Health Professional of the Year at the WA Rural Health Excellence Awards. For more than a decade, Dr Youngson has served her Warren-Blackwood community not only as a general practitioner but as a tireless advocate for better mental health outcomes for young people. Sarah's work reminds us that, in regional communities, health care is never confined to the walls of a clinic; it is about trust, relationships and a deep understanding of your community. Dr Youngson's award recognises her community health achievements in improving access to care in local schools, reducing wait times for families and her commitment to suicide prevention.”
“Bulk distributors are in crisis too. Eagle Petroleum, Kalgoorlie, have advised they cannot guarantee supply to seven Goldfields service stations beyond this weekend. Meanwhile, it appears the big four fuel companies have plenty of fuel for city bowsers. Minister Bowen is gaslighting regional Australians when he implies that we are hoarding fuel. Minister Bowen, is it not the major wholesalers who are doing the hoarding while the small independents and our regional economies starve for fuel? This government has the tools to safeguard supply for those that produce food and fibre for our nation. What it lacks is the courage to act.”
“I rise today to condemn this government's failure to guarantee access to fuel for all Australians. Constituents of my regional electorate are contacting me in droves as fuel dries up for their businesses—livestock farmers who need to truck cattle and sheep to market, grain growers preparing paddocks for seeding, southern forests horticulturists who need diesel for their irrigation systems and tractors, transporters who need to take their produce to market and our Great Southern fishermen and fish processors, who are struggling to save their livelihoods under the WA Labor government's demersal fishing ban. Despite Minister Bowen's assurances that there is plenty of fuel in the country, big wholesalers are rationing fuel, regional servos are running dry and regional industries are being brought to a standstill.”
“We've seen prices spike. I've seen up to $2.27 for unleaded 91 across my electorate. Flicking through the responses to my Facebook post from yesterday's question, I saw someone had posted a historical post from the Prime Minister in 2021 where he'd posted a fuel station sign showing petrol at $1.79. He said, 'I bet Scott Morrison hasn't been out looking at petrol prices recently.' Well, isn't karma beautiful? At the moment we are seeing petrol prices under this Prime Minister rocket through $2.20, and we'll see them hit $2.50 if they don't get the Strait of Hormuz cleared shortly.”
“Twenty per cent of the world's oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, and we haven't yet seen the impact of the fact that that strait has now been closed for nine days. So, if I'm a wheat belt farmer and I'm thinking I'm going to need a considerable amount of diesel in the next two to three months and we haven't really seen the impact of the conflict on fuel supply yet, then I'd be very concerned. I wouldn't necessarily be panicking, but I would be very concerned. I'd be very concerned that the minister can't give us any assurances and doesn't seem to have taken this issue seriously until the last couple of days. Now he's holding meetings with the various regulatory bodies and so on. It is of enormous concern to the people of my electorate. Going beyond our farmers, we're seeing roadhouses across the electorate running out of fuel.”
“When they ring up their fuel suppliers and say they need 25,000 or 50,000 litres, which is a big dump—that's the two tankers you see on the road, in one hit—and they are told that the fuel is not available, they're not panicking but are concerned about that, and they want answers from the minister. The minister says we've got plenty of fuel on hand here and there are ships on the water; it's all good. But anybody looking a bit beyond that, like a farmer who might need fuel at end of March into April and through May for their seeding program would be thinking that the conflict in the Middle East has been going for about eight or nine days now, which is about the shipping time either from the Middle East or a little bit less out of Singapore, where a lot of our fuel is refined, but a lot of that crude does come out of the Middle East.”
“Going more broadly than my potato farmers, Western Australia just produced 27.2 million tonnes of grain in the last harvest. Those farmers have just come off a record season and are busy preparing for the next season. There's a lot going on out on the broadacre wheat belt farms that requires a lot of diesel: they're spreading lime; doing summer spraying; there's stubble rolling going on; and, by the end of the month, they will start dry sowing. If they're not able to start sowing at the correct time, it will have a catastrophic impact on the yield come the end of the year.”
“He gave some very vague assurances that there was enough fuel in Australia, but he couldn't give the guarantee that those potato farmers in the south of my electorate in WA will get the fuel that they need. Now, we heard today that the Kwinana storage tanks have had a block put on them and that distributors are not allowing fuel to leave those tanks. The minister says in the Dad's Army style of Corporal Jones, 'Don't panic, don't panic.' But these farmers aren't panicking. They're just being prudent and they are being told that the fuel that they need to get those potatoes out of the ground and get them onto the supermarket shelves is not going to be available. That's not panicking; that's responding to something that you've been told by your supplier.”
“In the deep south of my electorate, in the southern forests around Manjimup and Pemberton, our potato farmers are working flat out at the moment. The Della-Vedovas, the Bendottis, the Omodeis, the De Campos and many, many other families are busy harvesting potatoes, which are on a very finely tuned supply chain. They start harvesting in January and they generally go through until about June. Those potatoes end up on the shelves in our major supermarkets within days of them coming out of the ground. Now, yesterday I asked a question of the minister on behalf of one of those farmers, Dom Della-Vedova, who had been told that he had 10 days fuel supply and that it would be three weeks before he would get any more. I asked the minister if he could guarantee that Dom will get the fuel that he needs. The minister obfuscated for three minutes.”
“We are now subsidising the Chinese car industry to a greater extent than we ever subsidised our own domestic car industry. That is the level of complete economic mismanagement that this government has foisted on the country.”
“Under the FBT exemption policy, a person who leases a $60,000 car would save close to $12,000 per year if they bought an EV instead of a petrol car … The Financial Review reported in August that the policy was set to cost more than $23 billion over the coming decade. But the real clincher here is that the benefits of this scheme flowed disproportionately to workers earning more than $150,000, who made up more than 50 per cent of the recipients. This is the Labor Party, right?—the party of the battler, the party of the worker. You couldn't make this stuff up. The one last clincher here is that this $1.5 billion per annum subsidy—effectively, to the Chinese car-making industry—is more money than the Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal, used to subsidise our own domestic car industry. Get that!”
“People have asked, and there have been senior ministers from the other side of the chamber calling out during question time: 'What would you cut? Where would you cut?' I'll give the government a bit of free advice here. It's about the fringe benefits tax exemption on electric vehicles. Now, this is an absolute doozy. This is the scheme whereby people buying electric vehicles under novated leases are exempt from the fringe benefits tax. The cost of this scheme has blown out by a factor of 15 on the government's original numbers. These are numbers I'm getting from a climate policy think tank called Climateworks Centre. They were quoted in the Australian Financial Review . This is a climate change think tank: … $1.35 billion in lost tax this financial year—up from the original forecast of $90 million.”
“In February, the Reserve Bank raised interest rates by 25 basis points, so we're now sitting at 3.85 per cent. The government simply cannot escape the law of economics. High government spending always results in higher inflation, and higher inflation demands higher interest rates. According to Compare the Market, a single 0.25 percentage point rate rise could push monthly repayments up by about $94 for someone with a $600,000 mortgage. That's an extra $1,182 per annum. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer were very keen to take the credit when inflation briefly started to trend down, and they now must accept the blame as it goes back up. Let's not hear any excuses from the Treasurer about the current conflict in the Middle East. That 3.8 number was baked in well and truly before we saw that conflict erupt.”
“Those are the stage 3 tax cuts that the previous government legislated and which were reversed by the current government. As we as we know, last week the inflation figure jumped back to 3.8 per cent, which is the highest in the developed world. Comparable countries like the United States are at 2.4 per cent, and the European Union is at 1.9 per cent. One of the things about having lower inflation as a starting point is that, when you do get a world shock, like the current conflict in the Middle East, then you're starting from a reasonable point. When you start at 3.8 per cent, as the Reserve Bank have forecast, the conflict in the Middle East will add 1.2 per cent to our inflation. We will be up at five per cent, according to that forecast, which will be catastrophic.”
“As I'm in continuation, I'll just reiterate some of the points I was making last week about the government's profligate spending. I just remind people that spending growth is running at four times the rate of the growth of the economy, and debt is forecast to soon reach $1.2 trillion. Spending is now $160 billion higher than when the government came to office in 2022. That's an additional $16,000 for every household across Australia. Since coming to office, the government has added around $100 billion to the national debt. In 2024-25, the Commonwealth raised $717 billion in receipts, which is equal to 25.9 per cent of GDP, the highest in 25 years. While I touch on revenue raised, many middle-income earners would have experienced over the last four years bracket creep taking a larger percentage of their wages every week.”
“My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. A potato farmer in Manjimup, Dom, texted me: 'I rang up Fuels West to order some fuel yesterday. They told me they have no fuel and a three-week waiting list for deliveries. I have 10 days fuel left. After that, you won't be eating my spuds.' Last week the minister said our fuel supplies were in good shape. Can the minister assure Dom, Transwest Fuels and Bartranz Petroleum they will get the fuel they need?”
“They have been cut under this government, and that is going to make the task for those amazing wheat growers even harder. Debate interrupted.”
“You would know well, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we need services out in the regional areas so that people will live there and develop our nation. There are a couple of programs that I'll mention in the last minute or so available to me. Last Friday night I joined Co-operative Bulk Handling and about 1,000 WA grain growers to celebrate a 27.2 million tonne grain crop. The problem now is getting that crop to port. There were two programs that the Morrison government were running to assist that enormous freight task. One was called the agricultural supply chain infrastructure fund, and the other one was called the Wheatbelt Secondary Freight Network. These were funds of well over $100 million that were investing in the infrastructure required to get that crop to port and to get billions of dollars of income in for the government.”
“That might be politically expedient, but let me tell you, Deputy Speaker, that getting people to come and live in those small regional and remote towns, to work on the mines and to work on the farms which produce the wealth of this nation, is getting harder and harder. They're looking at the services that people in Labor held seats in the city are getting and thinking: 'Why am I living out here, where I can't get my children to see a doctor? Why wouldn't I go and live in the city and get access to all these services that are popping up all over the place?' This is an issue that's more than just political expediency. We all understand that, when you're in government, you look after your people, your side. I'm sure there are a few whiteboards around the place. This is an important issue in terms of our country's economic wellbeing.”
“I've outlined the costs that our families are having to bear, but the lack of government investment and expenditure in our regions is appalling. We just heard the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry talk about all the wonderful projects that have been announced and funded in her seat in Tasmania. If you live in the seats of O'Connor and Durack, there is no such thing as 24-hour GP clinics. When we checked a month ago—it may have changed—there were no bulk-billing GP services across my electorate in O'Connor. So, despite producing the bulk of the nation's wealth, we're missing out on all of the fruit of that labour.”
“But what that means to families across Western Australia, particularly regional Western Australia, is that, in the past 12 months, child care is up 13 per cent and children's clothing is up nearly seven per cent. At the checkout, beef and lamb are up 12 and 14 per cent respectively. These are everyday costs that families are having to absorb, and they're very hard for those hardworking families to absorb. I want to get a bit more local and talk about the electorates of O'Connor and Durack. As I said, it's great to have my friend the member for Durack here in the House. Fifty per cent of Western Australia's mercantile exports leave from Western Australia. Between our two electorates, I'll have to give most of the credit to the member for Durack. Much of that 50 per cent comes from those two electorates in regional WA.”
“I want to talk about Western Australia for a minute—the great state of WA, which is the engine room of our economy—and I'll come to that in a minute. I'm so glad I've got my friend the member of Durack here. In last Thursday's West Australian , under the headline 'Bill shock for WA families', it was reported that WA is experiencing some of the highest inflation rates in the nation. The West Australian reported that inflation in Western Australia was running at 4.9 per cent in January 2026, up from 4.4 per cent in December 2025. There are plenty of economists there who would point the finger at government spending as the cause of that.”
“I just want to run through some numbers that Australian families are all too aware of. After four years of Labor, we've got insurance up 39 per cent, energy prices up 38 per cent, rents are up 22 per cent, health costs are up 18 per cent, education costs are up 17 per cent and food prices are up 16 per cent. These are not luxuries; these are essentials of everyday life that Australian families are having to deal with. On top of that, we're about to see mortgage rates rise. They were quite high, and we did have a little bit of relief there for a few months. I think we've had 12 interest rate rises, and we had three cuts. Now we've had one rise, and we're back on the way up, which is very hard for Australian families to absorb into their budgets.”
“In the projected years we've seen expenditure as a percentage of GDP: 26.9 per cent in 2025-26; 26.9 per cent again in 2026-27; and 26.6 per cent in 2027-28. These are record-high levels of government spending to GDP outside of the worst of the pandemic years. We're seeing that starting to manifest itself in the runaway inflation that the Treasurer had assured us was back in the genie's bottle. Sadly, for Australian families, the genie has popped out of the bottle. Looking at the commentary of the Reserve Bank governor, that genie is going to run away from us. As I said, this is all down to out-of-control government spending. I've got a list of quotes here—I'm going to run out of time, so I won't quote them all—where various economists are squarely pointing the finger at government expenditure fuelling inflation.”