ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT- MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE - Economy

I want to take the member for Higgins up on a couple of issues. I have the utmost respect for the member for Higgins; I want to put that out there. She was a clinician scientist before coming to this place, an expert in infectious diseases as a physician and an award-winning doctor as well. So I do want to commend her and thank her on behalf of the nation for the work that she has done in the medical field.

Ms Plibersek: Hear, hear.

Mr McCORMACK: I hear, 'Hear, hear', from the member for Sydney. And I do acknowledge it; I am being genuine. But to say that the Liberals—and Nationals, by the way; we were a coalition government—did nothing in 10 years is to completely erase what happened during COVID. I look around and there is not one member in this chamber at the moment who was in that meeting when we were told by the Chief Medical Officer that 40,000 Australians would die unless we acted. We acted. And we saved many, many lives—thousands of lives.

I am slow to anger, but it irritates me a lot when the Treasurer in question time today and the previous speaker say that we have nothing to show for what we did as a government. We do have something to show, and it's 10s of thousands of people's lives. I think that if you were being fair you would, as a doctor, also acknowledge that. It is important.

This matter of public importance is about the economy; it is about the nation; it is important. When you think that a recession of sorts—the way it's been described in this matter of public importance goes to the core of what people are able to take home now. People are taking home less, and real wages are falling. Don't take my word for it. I'm not reading off talking points. I'm talking about the anecdotal evidence that you hear from everybody. When you go to meetings, when you go to sporting events and when you go into your electorates, you hear just how tough people are doing it. And no doubt you are hearing it too.

I appreciate the Reserve Bank of Australia has held steady on interest rates today. Thank goodness for that, because it is so hard for people—certainly for those who are new in the homebuying market—to achieve what used to be the great Australian dream. When you talk about the economy, you see the Labor government wanting to put more taxes in. They're wanting to charge our farmers a biosecurity levy. Let's call it what it is; it is a tax. They want to charge our farmers for their competitors' goods coming in from overseas. We are going to be slugging our farmers. What country on earth would be so preposterous, so ridiculous, as to even contemplate that, let alone want to legislate it through their national parliament? Then we have the fuel efficiency standards. It has been described by the member for Lindsay as a tradies tax, and she's right. It's also a tax on the mums who want to carry their kids around to sporting events, dancing performances and all of those things. For people with families and growing families, it is going to be a slug on their ability to have the SUV.

Earlier today I heard a horrendous story about the town of Tom Price in Western Australia, population 2,874 last time they counted. That community, which is in the Ashburton shire of Western Australia is responsible, with the shire's output, for—wait for it—two per cent of the nation's GDP. That's a lot of money, and yet it doesn't have a bank. The Treasurer, instead of maligning the previous government's economic record, should be asking questions as to why that community doesn't have a financial organisation, why that community's people have to put cash in suitcases and drive it down to Perth, why the nearest bank is about 360 kilometres away. These are the issues that everyday, ordinary Australians are asking, and they're not being by those opposite. They're not being addressed by the government and they should be. These are the bread-and-butter issues. Instead of coming in and getting your talking points and reading them ad nauseam, do something that's constructive for and on behalf of Australians, particularly regional Australians, who carried this nation through COVID.