Address to Parliament - Private Members' Business - Economy
I very solidly and earnestly and stridently support this motion put forward by the member for Menzies. The member for Bruce has just given us a five-minute dissertation and asked a few questions. There were no facts—I say this as he scurries out of the Federation Chamber—about his trillion-dollar debt claim. It is not $1 trillion of debt. It is nowhere near $1 trillion of debt. But we keep hearing it. We hear it from the Prime Minister. We hear it from the Treasurer. We just heard it from the member for Bruce.
We get asked: what have we got in return for the debt that has been incurred? I'll tell you what we have. We have many tens of thousands of Australians alive today because of the investment that we placed in making sure that during the COVID pandemic we kept Australians as safe as we could, as alive as we possibly could. Indeed, the member for Bruce mentioned JobKeeper, through which 700,000 jobs were saved. What was the alternative? We hear repeatedly members opposite talking about $1 trillion worth of debt and asking, 'What have we got in return?'
A government member interjecting—
MICHAEL McCORMACK:
I was in those meetings where we were faced with the prospect—the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Brendan Murphy said—that we could potentially lose tens of thousands of Australians within months, if not weeks. I was there when we were very worried about the prospect of having businesses close their doors not just for the downturn but, potentially, permanently. We put in place urgent and necessary and responsible measures to make sure that we kept the doors of business open, that we kept the economy going and, most importantly, that we kept Australians alive.
But we didn't just stop there. We also kept vaccines getting out to Pacific island nations. We played our part as a good neighbour should. We played our part in making sure that, indeed, we kept homes being built through the construction industry, through HomeBuilder. I heard the member opposite talking about wages. We have the highest minimum wage in the world, and that's a fact that not a lot of those opposite often espouse. We should be extolling the virtues of that. We are very lucky.
A lucky country isn't just there by good luck; it's there by good management. For nine years, this country was under very good management under the successive Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments. Just have a look at what three years of getting it done did. We had 815,600 female business operators and 220,000 trade apprentices. It was a record high. Indeed, 71.3 per cent of trade and exports were covered by free trade agreements. When we got into government, that percentage was in the 20s. It was very low. What we made sure of was the fact that we were getting our trade, all of those wonderful agricultural and resource exports, to the world. Australia was very much open for business after years of neglect by those opposite when Labor was last in power. Electricity bills went down eight per cent in the past two years, but what do we hear from those opposite? We hear 97 promises leading up to the election of power bills going to be reduced by up to $275. I wonder when that's going to happen. Not in the immediate future, let me tell you!
An honourable member interjecting—
THE DEPUTY SPEAKER
Order! Order!
MICHAEL McCORMACK
Indeed. I listened to them very closely and earnestly in silence. They should give me the same respect, but that respect isn't always forthcoming. It doesn't worry me in the chamber, but it does worry me when they don't show Australian families and Australian businesses the respect that they should be showing them by making sure they work night and day to get those electricity bills down. That's the important thing. If they want to show respect, that's what they should do. They should respect the promises they made leading up to the election and get power prices down. When people get their power bills, that's when they'll know that there's been a change of government. That's when they'll know that Labor is back in power because you can rest assured that, when Labor's in power, prices will always be up, whether it's the power bill, the grocery bill or any other bill.