address to parliament - PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS - Wages

Last Thursday, I met with some good-hearted people, people who are concerned about the aged-care sector: Jeff Hay and Fran Hatty from the Tocumwal Lions Community Hostel. They're not in my electorate but in the neighbouring electorate of Farrer. Also there were John Knight and Ross Tout from Uralba at Gundagai. They are very concerned about what is happening in aged care, particularly around the 24/7 registered nursing model. This private member's motion talks about funding a wage rise for aged-care workers. There's not much point in giving aged-care workers a wage rise if there is not an aged-care facility there. Indeed, Ms Hatty has said to me: 'Let's hope we can keep these little places going. In my opinion, they are the perfect place for our local people needing extra care as they age.'

The situation we have in country centres at the moment is that, if Labor continues to push ahead with 24/7 RNs, what you're going to see is many of those country aged-care facilities close because they can't meet that demand. In a facility such as Junee, where there are 19 or so residents, that means they probably need four or five RNs. They're very difficult to find in a community of that size, let alone a community of 70,000 people, such as Wagga Wagga.

This is about jobs. As the member for Groom pointed out, real wages have gone down under Labor. It's a simple fact. Don't take just the member for Groom's word and my word for it. ABC Fact Check has clearly stated that wages are under pressure because of the policies brought about by the government.

I'm proud of our record in government. For nine years, we put small business, workers and those people who help run the economy first and foremost. I look at my own electorate and the Inland Rail project, for instance. Now, 4,600 people worked on the Inland Rail project when we were in government. We were only just starting the Parkes to Narromine section—the first section—and then working on Narromine to Narrabri and Beveridge to Albury. All these sections gave hope and opportunity, particularly for Aboriginal people. For some, it was their first job.

What has happened to infrastructure since Labor came to power? They've put a pause on it. Just prior to the 2023 budget, the infrastructure minister said she was going to review all the infrastructure projects over a 90-day period. Some might say, 'Yes, okay,' but that's now 200 days plus! When is that review going to come out, and what is it going to entail? At the moment, what we're seeing with the review is that people are leaving Inland Rail and road projects in droves because councils, states and everybody else just doesn't know.

This side has the audacity to come in here and start talking about jobs, lecturing us about how bad we were when we were in government. Well, I'm quite frankly sick to the back teeth of listening to the Labor dirt unit talking about how bad we were when we were in government. As a government, we stopped the boats. We put in place measures which actually protected lives, because so many people were dying at sea. We put in measures to fix up the mess that Labor had left, and yet then they turn around on this false notion that somehow, some way, we were a bad government.

But, out there, the media might be a con—some of them—but the people aren't. Those people running businesses know that they no longer have an unlimited instant asset write-off. They know that it's capped and they know that it's capped because of the policies brought in by the Labor government. They know that inflation is at record highs, and indeed we only had to look last Tuesday, the first Tuesday in November, to see that, again, the rates that stopped a nation went up. And home mortgages—it is so hard to find a house, to find affordability in the housing market. And what is that side doing? They're talking about everything but what Mr and Mrs Average out there are talking about.

So I say: get out to your electorate, start listening to people—not talking at them like you normally do—get yourselves in operation, get yourselves in line with what normal everyday people are thinking— (Time expired)