Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (17:09): I begin by pointing out that the No. 1 priority of this calamitous government is not the cost of living. No. Labor have had two other priorities since May 2022: the doomed $450 million Voice to Parliament referendum and looking after the CFMEU and their union mates with radical industrial relations reform that has bulldozed the industrial relations landscape in Australia and made productivity a distant memory. Casual employment is almost extinct under Labor's changes, and the unions are coming for part-time employment too.

God help you if you are a farmer in my electorate of Mallee, or elsewhere in regional Australia, trying to find workers. Labor's tinkering with the hiring arrangements for casuals, contract, migrant and harvest labour, at the behest of their union masters, means Australians will find it very difficult to feed their families. Why? Because farmers have to shoulder the higher input costs and labour shortages, which unsurprisingly drives up the cost of food and the cost of living.

Labor are in denial about their failed policies, and now they are in a blue with the RBA about whether their spending is driving inflation. Economists have lambasted the Albanese government for denying the fact that their $315 billion in extra spending—equivalent to more than $30,000 per household and rising 16 per cent in the next two years—is all exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis. On Tuesday the RBA killed any talk of interest rate cuts by year's end, yet the Treasurer told us all we'd be seeing inflation tamed by Christmas.

On tax cuts: Australians are paying 20 per cent more income tax than they were at the election. The coalition, on the other hand, are the party of lower taxes. Labor broke their promise not to tinker with tax cuts, just like they broke their energy bill pledge for a permanent $275 relief, a promise made 97 times before the election. Even Labor's one-off $300 bill relief isn't going to all Australians. Some tenants, and those that had to go off the grid, aren't getting the $300 rebate. I've asked Minister Bowen why that is the case, and the crickets have been deafening. So much for Labor helping Australians with the cost of living.

I backed the changes to the tax cuts as soon as Labor announced them because I know people in my electorate of Mallee are struggling. Even though they're used to energy bill shock, now they face energy bill trauma. The increases have been astronomical, driven by yet another Labor experiment—gambling taxpayers' and bill payers' money on mass-scale wind turbines, blanket solar panels, 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines and unproven green hydrogen.

Victorian Labor have published a map that shrank six renewable energy zones to now just 1½ zones—one very big concentration of wind and solar infrastructure in my electorate of Mallee and one half in Wannon. Labor's zone in my electorate is well over 150 kilometres away from the windy coastline and less than 200 metres above sea level, in the Murray flood plains. Victorians are paying $620 million annually—and $200 million a year to foreign entities—for this Wild West gold rush of customer-draining energy subsidies, generating massive price hikes on their power bills.

Mallee constituent Jason Barratt from Traynors Lagoon told the Weekly Times:

How on earth are our energy prices going to be lower by handing bucketloads of money to foreign-owned companies? It doesn't make sense.

Hear, hear! Farmers like Jason and Claire Grant of Bunguluke are feeling harassed, bullied and intimidated by the tactics of energy project proponents. Claire came to my mobile office in Wycheproof during the break, with her one-year-old daughter on her knee. Claire was in tears about the behaviour of the proponents of VNI West trying to get access to her land. That is the human face, the human toll, of Labor's reckless rush to renewables and devil-may-care attitude to the cost of living. This government's No. 1 priority isn't the cost of living. (Time expired)

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