Ben Small
Forrest · Liberal Party · Australia
“My question is to the Prime Minister. Aussie legend Joseph Daoud spent $17½ thousand of his own money on billboards telling the Labor government to drop their ambition taxes. He's paid up again, winning an auctioned tennis match at the Lodge to get the Prime Minister's attention.”
“What creates that situation is where people are forced into a choice no Australian should have to make—a choice between getting care or keeping up with the bills. That's just not good enough.”
“Health care in this country, despite the press releases and the political spin, is under real pressure. In regional communities like mine, the pressure continues to mount on families who simply can't afford it. We're seeing hospitals under strain and emergency departments stretched thin.”
“I was recently contacted by Kim in my electorate who shared his telling experience with our local healthcare system. Kim doesn't need to see a doctor very often, but, on this occasion, he required a basic consultation by phone. He was told that it would cost him $75 for a few minutes on the phone.”
“The dissenting report the coalition has tabled in response to this details a litany of gross overreach on the part of this partisan witch-hunt because, ultimately, this is anything but a fair, balanced and impartial approach to assessing the feedback of the Australian community that we saw in the wake of the 2025 federal election.”
“By leave—Unfortunately, I stand here today to convey to the House that the coalition's position is that one of the most serious committees in the parliament has been reduced to a one-eyed, hyperpartisan witch-hunt of a group of religious Australians.”
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“To listen to a Labor MP just quote 'global success requires domestic support' will come as an absolute slap in the face to the Bunbury fishermen who, like I say, have had their licences cancelled with less than one month's notice, just before Christmas, because we hear in this motion moved by the Labor Party that there is more demand than ever for Aussie produce. So, if that's the case, why are they standing by and allowing their state counterparts to impose this destructive and reckless demersal fishing ban? They talk about exports, but I want to talk about the result, and that's imports. Australians love to support Australian businesses. Aussies love to eat locally grown or locally caught produce. The reality is that the WA demersal fishery produces some 400 tonnes of fish each year across both the recreational and commercial sectors.”
“I woke up almost like I was in an alternate universe reading this motion, because, frankly, the hypocrisy of Labor MPs who crow about agricultural fisheries and forestry exports reaching a high of some $85 billion in this financial year comes as a complete shock to the fishermen in my part of the world, in the south-west of WA, who have had their businesses cut from underneath them by the decisions of the Labor government there. They crow that this is recognising a significant milestone achieved with hard work, resilience and skill of Australia's primary producers—the same primary producers and indeed the same fishermen that have had their businesses lawfully cut from under them by the Labor government.”
“So every single part of the humble Aussie snag has been squeezed by rising costs fuelled by this government's spending habits and its net zero approach at any cost to energy. We hear plenty of smug commentary dressed up as economic analysis from the Treasurer, but Australians shouldn't judge the Australian economy by political spin; they should judge it by the humble Bunnings snag. The verdict is clear: we are cooked.”
“When they spend more, you pay more, and the best barometer of this is the humble Bunnings snag. Let's break it down. The gas bottle costs more because production and transport energy prices are up some 38 per cent in four years. The barbecue itself costs more as steel manufacturing and freight are absorbing higher power bills as well. The sausage meat costs more as farmers are having to pay extra for diesel, fertiliser, refrigeration and many other costs, whilst the same goes for the onions. The sauce is costing more because every ingredient must be grown, processed and bottled using energy that is unaffordable under Labor's net zero ideology. Even the price of bread—with its milling, baking and distribution costs—is rising through the roof, forcing Australians to pay more.”
“Through what was, no doubt, a long and arduous rehabilitation, Sean turned to snowboarding, which is perhaps an unlikely pursuit for someone living in Bunbury, but it was one that he took to with astonishing speed and talent. Within a year of the attack, he began competing at the elite level, and just a year after that he made his Australian debut in parasnowboarding. In a social media piece with Qantas, Sean expressed a massive thank you to the community and the people of Bunbury who have rallied behind Sean. Having represented Australia at the Paralympics in Milano Cortina, we're looking forward to welcoming Sean back as a true hero of Bunbury. You've already made us immensely proud. Australians are feeling the full force of inflation running rampant in this country under the Albanese government.”
“I want to place on the record the extraordinary courage and achievements of a Forrest resident and, indeed, the captain of the Australian Paralympic Team for the 2026 Winter Olympics, Sean Pollard. In 2014, he was surfing on the south-west coast of WA and was attacked by a 3½ metre great white shark. The attack cost him his left arm and his right hand, creating circumstances of unimaginable difficulty for a young man. Yet, in the face of this life-altering adversity, Sean demonstrated remarkable resilience. Most of us take for granted our ability to complete the simplest of daily tasks, but Sean had to relearn the basics of life, no doubt gaining a powerful sense of perspective along the way.”
“So we come to the point of seeing the Strait of Hormuz closed to shipping, with some 15 million barrels of oil a day MIA from global markets. Pipelines across Saudi Arabia and, indeed, to the port of Fujairah, which I went to as a sailor, have replaced some six million barrels of that, and the IEA's unprecedented release of 400 million barrels of oil at four million barrels a day has replaced that, leaving a gap of five million. That's why we need to have a serious conversation about resilience and the ability of Australia to once again be an energy independent nation.”
“To me, in a country where we need to promote childbirth, celebrate families and support those same families to raise the next generation of Australians, the last thing that we should be focused on is the pronouns in use. We shouldn't be asking questions as to whether or not, indeed, it is a woman who gives birth to children in our country. Those seem to be quite self-evident facts to those of us on this side of the House. Finally, when it comes to energy security, we deserve a very serious debate in this country. The so-called rules based order on which the liberalised world has effectively relied for many decades now, since at least the end of World War II, is indeed broken, and it makes no sense to play by the rules based order when there are actors around the world who would seek to subvert the interests of democracies, like Australia.”
“But it does raise the very curious question of 'what is a woman?' In my home state of Western Australia, the Western Australian government now issues a handheld pregnancy record to mothers-to-be, and it includes this fascinating insight: 'This handbook has information about the reproductive cycle and uses sexed language to avoid confusion.' So far, so good, but it continues, saying: 'Words such as "mother" and "woman" also include people who do not identify as women but have given birth to the infant they may be breastfeeding. If you are pregnant or have a new baby and do not identify as a woman or mother, please share your preferred pronouns with your healthcare team so that they can talk to you using words that are comfortable to you.' That is the Western Australian healthcare handheld pregnancy record.”
“In the lead-up to the last election, we saw and defended Liberal MPs and the Liberal Party making claims that the Greens and the teals had very similar voting records. Indeed, we tabled information that showed that, more than 80 per cent of the time, teal MPs vote with the Greens. I wonder now whether we are seeing the teal movement exposed as more extreme than even the Australian Greens, because it was the teal MPs in this place who sought to amend a bipartisan piece of legislation that sought to keep Australians safe, to protect Australians and to protect our way of life. That is something that I cannot forgive nor forget. Family policy is in focus because the fertility rate in Australia is collapsing. The number of children born to every woman in Australia is now just 1.4, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 live births per woman.”
“This week, the teals have been revealed in this place, because, whilst the parties of government were debating very serious matters of our border security and the rights of those who hold visas to come to our country, we saw an unbelievable stunt. Where the government of the day had taken the very serious decision to deny arrival en masse to Australia to those who hold temporary visas but were located in parts of the world undergoing conflict and crisis, the teals moved an amendment to that very serious piece of legislation that would have seen a humanitarian visa issued for every single one of those visas denied in such serious circumstances. It just goes to show that, when it comes to protecting Australians and protecting Australians' way of life, the teal movement cannot be trusted.”
“This leaves us looking at a situation where this might well be the beginning of Labor's high-tax, high-spending agenda, where the money is spent first and then they come hunting for the tax grab afterwards. We can't view this proposal in isolation. It is simply about this government spending more and pouring debt petrol on the inflation fire that is raging in our country. Let's not misunderstand—this is a fire that has been burning out of control since long before the recent events in the Middle East caused further concern with spiking energy prices and the likely impacts on the economy here in Australia. We'll see when the national accounts come out later today, but Australians have very real cause to be uneasy.”
“Ultimately, from the power of compounding, we understand that Australians who are able to invest today will do better in the decades ahead, and they do not have the ability to do so while grocery bills, power bills and their mortgages are going through the roof. Australians are facing immediate cost-of-living pressures because inflation is running rampant in this country. A future offset adjustment to super does little to relieve those stressors now and it reduces the ability of Australian families to set themselves up for a prosperous retirement. If the government is serious about helping Australian households, it needs to tackle inflation at its source today. Excessive spending and weak economic growth in Australia are the priorities for economic reform, rather than reshuffling offsets within the retirement income system.”
“It is a lifeline. Any change that introduces volatility, reduces predictability or complicates access to those funds carries real and devastating consequences for those individuals. The reality is that tax policy can't be designed in isolation from the lived reality of those Australians it impacts. When Australians' retirement income settings are destabilised, confidence in the superannuation system overall is eroded. The government's pointed to increases in the low-income superannuation tax offset, the LISTO, as evidence of balance in its proposal. Indeed, any measure that supports low-income earners building their retirement savings is welcomed by the coalition. But we have to be honest about the scale and the timing. The LISTO adjustments, while positive at the margin, do not put money back into household budgets today.”
“When we consider the additional risks in this new proposal beyond the headline rate and the threshold changes, the legislation introduces serious structural risks. The removal of the effective death tax exemption creates uncertainty for families in Australia at precisely the moment they are most vulnerable. In their darkest hours of grief, surviving spouses who rely on the superannuation balances of a partner to maintain stability after a death in the family shouldn't face additional tax complexity and reduced security. Total and permanent disability benefit recipients are another cohort whose needs need to be considered carefully. These are Australians who, through no fault of their own, are no longer able to work. Their superannuation is not an abstract investment vehicle or some piggybank to be raided by the government.”
“I think there are many across the chamber who recognise that we should have robust debate about taxation reform in Australia. But, it should be principled, predictable and based on broad consultation. It should be about enabling better economic growth in our country, rather than simply grabbing more of the hard-earned money of Australians and spending it as the government does. Ordinary Australians don't accept retrospective tinkering, ad hoc changes and ideological experiments dressed up as modest adjustments. Indeed, this proposal is simply emblematic of a broader pattern: higher spending first and then new taxes to pay for it later. It's not reform; it's just fiscal mismanagement.”
“There's a structural spending growth in our country that is outpacing sustainable economic growth. Indeed, with the economy stuck in first gear because of regulation, high inflation, high interest rates and the red tape that is crippling private business investment in our country, the reality is that the government is spending beyond its means and so it is reaching for new taxes to fill the gap. The Liberal Party and the National Party are committed, in coalition, to always be the parties of lower taxes. That means we're not supporting this blatant tax grab. Rather than confronting waste, prioritising programs and restoring fiscal discipline, Labor's simply on the hunt for new pools of your money to spend. As I said, trust is fundamental in tax reform in our country.”
“The ACTU's Sally McManus warned: I do think it's got to be indexed because you've got to make sure eventually people don't end up there— meaning, of course, those everyday Australians on ordinary wages who would have fallen victim to a $3 million threshold, had that not been indexed. The ACTU's former secretary Bill Kelty said: I think taxing unrealised capital gains is bad policy. It distorts the effective tax, changes your income flows, and if it was on superannuation generally, there would be a revolution about it. It would destroy super. It seems that the government has finally listened to some of its own critics, and that is a pleasing result. But, at the end of the day, it doesn't belie the fact that they have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.”
“We were told by this government that they were going to make life easier for families, for young Australians and for those who want to work hard to get ahead. Life has been harder under the Albanese government, and everyday Australians know that—whether they're paying the mortgage, paying the bills, simply leaving the supermarket or opening their power bills after a long hot summer—because they feel poorer. Their real standards of living are declining. The cost of living is rising, and the only thing that isn't is their real wages. The fact of the matter is that inflation is high. Interest rates are high because inflation and government spending are out of control. The government has been beaten by inflation in the economy. Perhaps most startling of all was that there were Labor voices against this proposal, and they varied.”
“Major structural tax changes should be put clearly and transparently to the Australian people. Instead, this was a proposal out of left field by a government that has simply run out of money. With limited consultation and a rushed legislative timetable, it is fortunate that the debate has resonated so strongly with Australians, who instinctively understand when something just isn't fair. When it comes to retirement savings in Australia, the nest eggs that are built over decades of hard work should be sacrosanct, and the bar for legitimate debate should be even higher than normal. Instead, we've seen a government that simply can't be trusted with the hard earned savings of Australians. The Treasurer, addicted to spending as he is, found himself without money. We always know what happens when Labor run out of money; they come after yours.”
“It wasn't just flawed policy; it was a sneaky trick to take more of your hard earned savings, all the while talking about being a government committed to lower taxes and Australians keeping more of what they earned. The government's backdown demonstrates one thing very clearly—that this was never settled policy based on sound principle; rather, it was a blatant tax grab that, when exposed, collapsed under the weight of public scrutiny in Australia. At the last election, Australians were not presented with a policy to tax unrealised gains in superannuation. They were not told that the longstanding superannuation settings in this country would be fundamentally altered, and they were not warned that indexation would be stripped away. Promises should matter in a democracy like Australia.”
“The fact that the original $3 million threshold wasn't indexed ultimately led to a situation where everyday Australians earning an average income would have eventually been tangled in this tax—no more so than in the inflationary environment that we see today, which has been made worse by the Treasurer's failure to control spending and indeed his willingness to pour debt petrol on the inflation fire that is raging in this country. Over time, more and more Australians would have been caught, not because they were wealthier in real terms but because inflation simply would have eroded the real value of the threshold. It's effectively bracket creep by design, the so-called thief in the night given free rein in our community by the Treasurer of Australia.”
“There's no better example of this than the farmers in my electorate, who are, at the end of the day, small businesses, and who, for a variety of reasons and reflecting the longstanding principles of the superannuation system, have put family assets like the farm into self-managed super funds. These aren't massively lucrative businesses operating on massive margins, particularly when you look at the pressures in the dairy sector for which the South West of WA is renowned. These are small family businesses who would have faced tax bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars just because a paper valuation on the family farm had gone up. There's no extra money in the kitty to pay for it, and that's what was so dangerous about this proposal.”
“Australians have always understood that a fair go, a fair deal with the government, would be that tax is paid when you've got income being realised. If you've got cash in your pocket, it's fair for the government to grab a share of it. To propose taxing paper gains, particularly in volatile asset classes, wasn't just a minor tweak; this was the abolition of a cornerstone of the taxation system in Australia. We in the coalition believed it was a dangerous precedent, because it was a structural shift that would have led to people in Australia facing massive tax bills without the cash in their pocket to pay them.”
“It was a proposal that was aimed not just at hurting retirees, but at ultimately stealing from future generations—younger Australians—without their knowledge or understanding, because, at the end of the day, things like the indexation of taxation thresholds aren't front of mind for young Aussies, for whom the dream of homeownership in this country has become something of a nightmare. Having exposed a clear breakdown in the relationship between the Prime Minister and his Treasurer, the original design to tax unrealised capital gains for the very first time in this country—which represented a fundamental break with the longstanding conventions of our tax system in this country—has seemingly been thrown in the bin.”
“For all of their talk about lower taxes and people keeping more of what they earn, this was a sneaky and devious taxation proposal that would have left Australians poorer, particularly everyday Australians, who ultimately would have been caught by the $3 million threshold in the absence of indexation. Thanks to sustained scrutiny from the coalition, from the superannuation sector itself, from small-business owners—including the farmers from my electorate—and from everyday Australians, Labor have been forced to step back from the most outrageous proposals of this particular policy. But, let's face it, it is still an unashamed tax grab by a government that is addicted to spending.”
“The one word missing from this debate is 'sorry'. The Treasurer should be saying sorry to the Australian people, particularly those aspirational Australians who believe in reward for effort and the incentive to strive in this country. Ultimately, we're only here today with a massive policy backtrack from this government because of sustained pressure, led by the coalition and backed in by everyday Australians across this country, to force this Labor government to abandon the taxation of unrealised gains, leading to the indexation of the new proposed threshold, which was a sorry absence from the previous proposal. It would seem that the government has been found out by everyday Australians.”
“The coalition believe in lower energy prices because that is what underpins a healthy economy in which private businesses have the capacity to invest, to take risks, to employ, to do what they do well and to drive this country forward. In a dangerous and uncertain world, we want to see more sovereign capability here in Australia, and that means that we need more than words. We need more than slogans. The so-called Future Made in Australia is currently consigning Aussie jobs to history. There are 250 local families in my electorate that understand more than ever that in this cost-of-living crisis there is nothing worse than losing your job and the security that it provides to your family.”
“Prices dropped by some 10 per cent when the now leader of the opposition, Angus Taylor, was the Minister for Energy in this country. Energy prices are up 40 per cent, and businesses are the canary in the coal mine because there is no subsidy, no protection, from energy prices for Aussie businesses—small and family businesses, in particular, like those that depend on large employers like the Albemarle lithium plant for work, whether from contracts, servicing, technicians and the like, right through to the cafes, hairdressers and local businesses that depend on manufacturing activity in Australia for a vibrant and prosperous economy that allows us to pay for our most vulnerable. Instead of a future made in Australia, we're seeing Aussie jobs consigned to history and those very same jobs exported to places like China.”
“The first thing I did after being appointed the shadow assistant minister for infrastructure was visit the Albemarle lithium plant at Kemerton in my electorate. I did so alongside the shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability, Andrew Hastie. Two hundred and fifty local people have been thrown out of jobs with the closure of that plant. The company has cited operating costs as the reason for that. Of course, we all know that operating costs are primarily driven by energy costs in heavy industry. This is firsthand evidence in my electorate—ground zero, if you like—of Labor's net zero ideology killing Australian jobs and our manufacturing capability. This is the result of energy prices going up by some 40 per cent in the four years since the Albanese government was elected.”
“The door should be slammed shut by this government, who, curiously, keep saying that this somehow has nothing to do with them and that issuing passports is just an automatic process. The minister, Tony Burke, said that this was just like getting a Medicare card. But, curiously, the passports act—which he is the responsible minister for—includes express provisions that allow the government of the day to intervene on security grounds. Temporary exclusion orders can be issued. Indeed, eight were issued under the Morrison government—which you guys seem very keen to talk about today all of a sudden. Eight temporary exclusion orders were issued under that government. How many has this government issued? Do you know?”
“Children aged between six and 10, standing with the severed heads of murdered humans, staring at a camera, smiling. When we talk about radicalisation occurring in terrorist hot spots under ISIS, that is the image that is seared into my mind, to say nothing of the atrocities that the member for Canning and deputy leader previously talked about, with the execution of journalists being livestreamed to the world. To see a human being locked in a cage and doused in fuel and set alight—these are the sorts of atrocities that occur under ISIS, and that is what these people who left Australia and went there knowingly signed up to support. It is a disgrace that they betrayed our country, our values and our way of life in that way. I don't want them back, the Liberal and National parties don't want them back, and we say the gate should be shut.”
“Overwhelmingly, these are FIFO workers leaving their families and our community to head off to iron ore mines that are generating billions of dollars of royalties for our nation's prosperity. I think it's only fair that we back them in with a terminal that's befitting of the contribution they make to our economy and, of course, creates those opportunities for international tourism in the region as well. The Prime Minister is very fond of landing his jet at Busselton Margaret River Airport, but not all of us have the benefit of a 737, and those FIFO workers deserve something more.”
“The Busselton Margaret River Airport is at the very heart of Forrest, lying there with great potential to diversify the local economy away from being reliant on just mining, and my community is desperate for this government to invest in a terminal upgrade to unlock its true potential. We're talking about not just the people that would come to the region on top of the planes; we're talking about creating opportunities for our agricultural businesses to send their produce directly to world markets underneath those passenger jets. The unparalleled growth of the airport is truly remarkable, from fewer than 20,000 passengers a year some 10 years ago to more than 250,000 now. We're talking about 500 people at a time trying to get through a terminal that only has capacity for 200.”
“Minister Rishworth should release the full, unredacted report, including the two dirty chapters that nobody wants to talk about, or else risk being complicit in a cover-up of corruption on an industrial scale in this country. The millions of dollars of CFMEU donations to the Labor Party surely don't buy those sorts of policy outcomes. I understand the pressure that must be brought to bear upon the minister, because you've even got the ALP president, Mr Wayne Swan, chairing Cbus, which is linked to the CFMEU as an industry super fund. The rivers of gold between this corruption and the Labor Party deserve sunlight to disinfect them once and for all.”
“The CFMEU Labor cartel has cost Victorians and indeed all Australians some $15 billion in money now. The intriguing thing is just how much of it ends up back in Labor Party coffers. But of course this is the sort of thing that a government that's committed to scrutiny, transparency, being the most open in history, wants nothing to do with. That's why we saw the Prime Minister and the Minister for Workplace Relations shut down parliamentary scrutiny of that. We understand now, in the face of these revelations today, that this corruption is systemic, it is endemic and it is industrial in its scale. The Prime Minister said that the Labor Party wouldn't accept CFMEU donations, but we know that the AEC disclosures show just how often they've been cashing the cheques of their cartel mates.”
“I don't know about those two chapters.' They do not want to know the answers to the very real questions that Australians need answered here. In fact, worse than that, the member for Perth crowed about some 121 members of the CFMEU that have been expelled from that organisation. In the context of some $15 billion of taxpayer money allegedly directed to underworld crime in Australia, that equates to some $124 million per individual booted out of that union. If that stacks up to pass the pub test, then I have been drinking at the wrong establishments my entire life. In fact, I look forward to tuning in to 'Tim TV'. I'll be one of the first subscribers provided that we get 'The Possum Hour'. What we got there for 10 minutes from the minister assisting the Prime Minister was nothing short of rip-roaring comedy.”
“This wasn't initiated by the Liberal Party; this was initiated by Zach Smith, the then national secretary of the CFMEU, responding to unthinkable allegations made public by Nine. His report—two chapters of that report—addressed some $15 billion of taxpayer money, worse than sprayed up against the wall like the rest of the waste this government oversees, funnelled to organised crime in this country. If the government were serious about addressing corruption and underworld criminality in this country, that would be worth investigating. But no, instead we find the Minister for Workplace Relations, the minister assisting the Prime Minister and this other cavalcade of Labor MPs come through here blustering: 'This report—what report? It was not a report to government.”
“It is staggering to listen to the member for Moore speak of amnesia and selective amnesia whilst completely neglecting that the very first act of this government in terms of its industrial relations agenda was to defund and abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the very independent regulator that we put as a tough cop on the beat to address union corruption and the cost impacts that it has on the construction of literally everything in this country, from homes all the way through to the big-build infrastructure projects that are the focus of this. Is this somehow a right-wing hit job? No. Let's go back through the very history of how Geoffrey Watson SC came to investigate these matters.”
“Whilst it isn't always the crime that gets you, by golly, the cover up always does. Isn't it amazing that at the first rays of sunlight shone here on union corruption and the stench of its ties to the Labor Party we see the cockroaches scampering for the corners, seeking refuge in the only place they know: the dark shadows of the underworld in Victoria.”
“I note the crowing from those opposite about the reduction in emissions, completely neglecting the fact that emissions were down 26 per cent from 2005 levels by the time we left office in 2022. So, for all of the billions of dollars that have been shovelled out the door in the last couple of years, we've seen emissions tick down, and that exposes the absolute hypocrisy of this government's energy program.”
“You walk into a cafe that is air-conditioned. That costs money. The lights cost money. The heating elements in the coffee machine cost money. You're paying for that higher power price everywhere you go. Importantly, manufacturing businesses, who are huge users of energy in Australia, are the ones doing it perhaps hardest of all. The answer from this government is that you might be able to get a cheaper home battery for your small manufacturing business. In my part of the world, where we've got alumina refineries that are some of the biggest energy consumers in Western Australia, no cheaper home battery is going to offset the explosion in power prices that we've seen in recent years.”
“There is no benefit in a battery program that has blown out from $2.3 billion to more than $7 billion already, and the way that Minister Bowen keeps fiddling with the pieces of the puzzle, as we're told, should actually cause Australians to lose sleep at night because that guarantees more billions of taxpayer dollars shovelled out the door for higher prices for those Australians left to carry the cost. It is unthinkable that we can continue to do the same thing and expect a different result to what we've seen, and yet that's the plan from our energy minister here in Australia. The problem is that energy is everywhere in our economy. It's not just a household issue, but rather one that impacts our businesses as well, like those small and family owned businesses—cafes, the corner store and the like.”
“I know because we've done the modelling.' Well, that modelling has been thoroughly discredited by the fact that the power prices are through the roof. And for all of the talk, for all of the numbers and statistics that we hear from those opposite, we do not hear an apology for a core broken promise, and we do not hear a plan to lower power bills for Australians. That's why some 336,000 Australian households right now can't afford their power bills, let alone stumping up for one of these so-called cheaper home batteries. There is no relief for those Aussies out there who are renting, who are locked out of the property market because the Albanese government has overseen an absolute explosion in migration at a time that housing construction has been limited in Australia.”
“There have been lots of numbers and statistics here tonight from those opposite but not one mention of $275, because that was the promise that mattered to Australians. But, rather than seeing their power bills coming down under this government, we've seen them go up by 24 per cent in the last year alone. That's the real cost that matters to Australians. It's what they get in their bill, not the wholesale cost that Chris Bowen likes to talk about. The fact is that Australians are paying $1,300 a year more for their power bills than the $275 cut they were promised by this government. And let's not forget the promise came from the Prime Minister himself. When challenged by a journalist the very first time that the Labor Party announced this commitment to the Australian people, Mr Albanese replied: 'I don't think; I know.”
“As the member for Bonner was seeking to reassure the chamber that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, has it all under control, she only needed to lean on the dispatch box the way he does when she talked about two million Australians having a so-called cheaper home battery—neglecting to mention somehow that the cost of that program has gone from $2.3 billion to more than $7 billion in borrowed money at the same time that the number of Australians in energy debt has risen to some 336,615 households. That's 336,000 Australian households who cannot afford their power bills today. How did we get here? We got here because the Albanese government promised, no fewer than 97 times, to lower power bills in Australia by $275.”
“Instead, those cost pressures—soaring energy bills, rising insurance premiums, employee costs through the roof—are driving insolvency at a rate unseen in this country and without response from this government.”
“Instead of responsible government taking deep action to address this, we're seeing things like the general interest charge levied by the ATO being made non-tax-deductible by the government, a government which is so drunk on spending, so addicted to throwing money out the door on ever bigger government programs, that small businesses who are already facing severe cost challenges are slapped in the face with the interest bills they pay to the ATO no longer being deductible like every other form of interest. It's unfair, it targets those who are having a go in our economy and it is emblematic of this government's approach to small business. These are businesses—mums and dads, husbands, wives, a couple of mates—who deserve a break.”
“If you took an honest look, as this government should, you would see that costs across the economy are exploding and there is a disproportionate impact on certain sectors, like the construction, hospitality and retail sectors. Indeed, construction and hospitality alone account for some 42 per cent of insolvencies. In the hospitality sector, we're seeing insolvency rise at more than a 50 per cent year-on-year rate. This is ASIC data; this isn't hyperbole from the opposition.”
“It is not dependent on four in five jobs being dependent on taxpayer money in some respect. It is dependent on a healthy private sector driven by that small-business entrepreneurialism. This is a relatively new phenomenon for Australia because we have never seen anything like the level of small-business insolvency that is occurring under the Albanese government. There has been a 260 per cent increase in the insolvency rate since Labor was elected in 2022. With those insolvency figures exploding, and each one of them representing the very real dreams of Australians going up in smoke, you would expect the government to take a serious look at what is occurring and why it is that businesses are collapsing left, right and centre.”