ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS - BUDGET

Interestingly, the member for Spence quotes the 1994 movie Speed. He's no Keanu Reeves but we'll give him his due! It's a good thing Labor's not driving the bus on the road. The only road that Labor is paving at the moment is the road to failure, because it has put a hold on all infrastructure programs and projects for 90 days while it reviews them. Indeed, on Saturday I drove to Sydney and for four hours I drove at the speed limit, of course—100 kilometres an hour. It took me four hours to get to Sydney, and then I turned on the intersection through Newtown, through Grayndler. Then it took me, would you believe, an hour and 20 minutes to travel just 7.1 kilometres.

Mr Burke: I don't believe it!

Mr McCORMACK: You can believe it, because that's exactly what happened. I was there to go and watch the Inner West Magpies—the club that you're patron of, Member for Watson! They didn't quite win, just like the people of Australia didn't quite win when the budget was handed down a fortnight ago—not a week ago but a fortnight ago. It was the softest sell of a budget that I've experienced in the time I've been here—that's more than 12 years, more than 12 budgets. Why would that be? Because they had nothing to sell—only more despair and more misery. We're putting a hold on local roads and community infrastructure; there's no new money for that in the budget. The money for the Stronger Communities Program—slashed, gone.

Mr Rob Mitchell: No, it's not!

Mr McCORMACK: Yes, it is gone, Member for McEwen. If you want to go and sell it, you'll be misleading the public. This was a typical Labor budget—all airy-fairy and fluffy but no actual infrastructure.

The member for Spence talked about small business: 'The $20,000 instant asset write-off is fantastic.' It was unlimited under the coalition. When times got tough we didn't put a restriction on the amount that small businesses could go and fund. Indeed, for the tradie who wanted to get a ute for his business we enabled them to buy that complete ute, not a spare tyre. That's all you get under this mob, and that's a fact.

Real wages are stagnant at the moment. The cost of living is one thing that's gone up under Labor. On power prices, what did we hear 97 times? Ninety-seven times we heard the Prime Minister utter the words, 'Well, there's going to be a $275 power cut.' Where is that power cut? Don't worry about the little asterisk, the little disclaimer: 'Oh, it'll be in five years from now.' I call rubbish, because people out there aren't saying, 'My power bills are going down.' They are saying that they are going up, because they indeed are. You look at the interest rates—up, up, up, up. They're just increasing. Unemployment has gone up. Indeed, when we were—

Government members interjecting—

Mr McCORMACK: I hear those opposite say, 'Oh, what did we get for all the debt?' Well, I'll tell you what we got. We actually saved 60,000 people's lives during the pandemic.

Mr Rob Mitchell interjecting—

Mr McCORMACK: Don't rock your head back and go, 'Oh,' Member for McEwen. That's the prospect that we were faced with. That's the premise that we were given: 60,000 lives were going to be lost within weeks or months, and we put the action in place to ensure that we protected not only people's lives but their livelihoods. That's what we did. At the same time, through JobKeeper, we protected hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of small businesses. We kept their doors open because of the policies that we put in place. What did we hear that those opposite wanted to do? They wanted to pay people to get jabs. They go on about the debt and mislead the parliament about a trillion dollars worth of debt. They would have made the debt even higher, and it's already gone up. The debt has gone in the one year and one day that those opposite have been in power. That is a fact. That is an absolute truth.

In the budget, even on the infrastructure projects that have been put on hold, in the future they are not even going to give local communities the input. They're going to have Canberra decisions made for local projects made around the regions, and that is a disgrace. National Emergency Management Agency staff have already been cut from the regions. That's an absolute fact. There's no localism. There's hardly any money. The veterans wellness centres have all been taken out of coalition seats—such as in Wagga Wagga, where we have all three arms of the military—and gone to Labor seats. Under the Mobile Black Spot Program, all the grants made in New South Wales have been to Labor seats. They talk about colour coded spreadsheets. The only colour on Labor spreadsheets is red—red for Labor and red for debt. This is the true Labor that we get. What a miserable 12 months! What a miserable lot you are!