Not much shocks me, but this week I talked with a woman who told me her story of suffering and distress as a result of being severely injured by the Covid vaccine. Her story shocked me and should shock every Australian.

Verity is a 52-year-old highly trained midwife in my electorate. Well, she was a midwife until 2021 when she was coerced into being jabbed in order to keep her job. The perverse irony is that the jab injured her so severely that she is no longer able to work as a nurse or midwife.

What makes this story even more distressing is that this highly qualified and experienced midwife was reluctant to be jabbed from the start!

Verity has given me permission to share her story and I will introduce you to her on this program in the next couple of weeks.

In 2021, Verity was a fit and healthy woman. She ran several times a week and participated in park runs and half and full marathons around Australia and New Zealand.

Each time she came on shift at the hospital, Verity was asked whether she’d had her vaccine. When she tried to discuss her concerns with fellow work colleagues, she was told by her manager quote - “Keep your mouth shut and follow the rules”.

Verity told me that a few weeks later she was informed by a work colleague that she was no longer allowed on the premises. HR told her she was immediately stood down and within a few weeks her employment was terminated due to orders from the Chief Health Officer.

Verity was completely cut off from work colleagues. She received no support from anyone despite having worked tirelessly at the hospital for around 10 years…including night duties, public holidays and over Christmas and New Year. 

This is a nurse who like every other nurse in 2020, prior to the vaccines, put herself and health on the line to care for patients. Quite literally, she went from hero to zero overnight. 

With no job, no leave, no income and no job prospects – not even as a cleaner, Verity had no choice but to submit to the experimental injection. Because some other family members had experienced reactions to the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, Verity was determined to wait until Novavax became available. Together with her son, (who incidentally had a cardiac history but couldn’t continue his university course without being jabbed), Verity went and got the Novavax. 

If you think her story is horrendous so far, what happened next is heartbreaking.

Verity immediately started experiencing joint pain in her left arm, then her legs along with “skin crawling sensations all over her body and head which intensified, followed by extreme itchiness like an allergic reaction.

When she consulted a doctor he said, “I don’t know anything about Novavax but if you’re having effects, it means its working!”. He also called her an anti-vaxxer! Which clearly, she wasn’t because she’d submitted to the damn jab.

How dare he?

Two weeks later Verity continued to struggle with severe chest pains. She couldn’t breathe properly which was exacerbated by lying down.

Not wanting to go back to the first doctor she saw another in the hope of being listened to and believed. But this new doctor also called her an anti vaxxer, and said that she was suffering from anxiety and might be pre-menopausal. I’ve heard this a lot from other women, and it is one of the most insidious forms of gaslighting that I’ve heard. 

Verity continued and still continues, to suffer from a broad range of other debilitating symptoms… severe headaches, hearing loss, tinnitus, chest pains, leg weakness, arthritis and extreme fatigue and insomnia. 

So, here’s this previously fit and healthy highly skilled woman who’s unable to work in her profession – unless she gets a further two jabs!!!

This is crazy!

Verity was literally sobbing over the phone when we spoke two days ago – not just about her own pain and suffering, but the palpable relief that I believed her where others had ignored and doubted her.

I have to ask, where are the doctors who know this is happening?

Are they turning a blind eye?

Are they wilfully blind?

Are they fearful of retribution from AHPRA?

What’s stopping them from coming forward and sounding the alarm?

I’ve been telling the stories of vax injured Australians for three years now, but my shock at the lack of compassion, the lack of decency, the lack of humanity outrages me more than anything.

If you’re a doctor who wants to speak up but feels like you can’t, please contact me. I will do whatever I can to help get the truth out.

I did enjoy hearing from the previous speaker, the member for Solomon, about Darwin and surrounds and the whole of the Northern Territory. It's greatly loved by all Australians. I want to pass it on to you that I love the place and my wife loves the place. We've only been there a couple of times, but it's a great place to visit. And you've reminded us that it's 50 years since Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin. I can recommend a trip to Darwin to anybody. In particular, go down to the wharf and have a look at the presentations they've got down there about the bombing of Darwin.

One of the saddest things that happened to me as a federal member was when I went to Monash University—Monash was playing a part in Gippsland at the time and had a role down there. I was meeting someone in the Clayton campus and I couldn't find a car park. I was driving round and round, trying to find a car park. I finally got a car park and went to the area where I was meeting someone. I said to the person that greeted me, 'It's very hard to get a car park,' and he said, 'Yes, but don't worry; all the country kids get over it this term and they'll give up. They won't come back next term. There'll be car parks everywhere.' He was talking about students from the regions—that it's all just too hard for them.

Education is a really important issue in Australia. I'm going to talk about HECS in a minute, but I want to just put the framework there for you, Deputy Speaker Wilkie. We have education because it's the lifter of all young people. A good education means a good future. What was said in the parliament by the minister today—he talked about somebody with a tertiary education earning $60,000 a year more than someone who has just come out of a secondary college or whatever. Now, I'm not a tertiary educated person. I came up in a different way, through business. But I know how important education is. Education is funded by the states and federally, and it's important to train our population for greater productivity, greater opportunity, greater lifestyle, greater science, greater maths, greater chemistry, greater engineering, to make a greater society.

That's why we invest in our students—because they can grow Australia. They can make Australia great—not to be confused with an American politician! Why do we educate them? We educate them to make Australia a great place, and we need people who are highly educated to be able to have the future that we desire for them. So we invest in education.

However, once HECS fees came in—and I've got to tell you upfront that Bron and I, my wife and I, paid for our children's university fees upfront so they didn't have a HECS debt. Most students don't have parents who are able to do that at the time.

Currently in Australia our young people are facing the toughest times that I can remember in my years in this parliament, especially our tertiary education students. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about high food costs or skyrocketing rents, if you're fortunate enough to get a rental; it's exceedingly difficult for students to survive, let alone what country kids have to put up with, with the dislocation from their country area to go to university. If studying a full-time course wasn't enough, most university students are also juggling work, and many have career responsibilities as well. But on top of this, with regard to their HECS fees, they're being lumped with yearly indexation that dramatically increases their student loans, not to mention their stress levels.

From a long time ago up until recently, it was about a four per cent annual increase in the HECS debt. In three years, there's been a 12 per cent increase. If you haven't paid any back, that's 12 per cent on top of what you had before. As you know, compounding interest when you're investing is good, because it compounds and compounds and compounds, and over ten years whatever you've invested comes out nearly double or triple what you put in. That's just compound interest and nothing else. Compound indexation over a period of time, especially for women—and I'll come to that in a minute—has left people with an ever-increasing bill. But that four per cent over the last couple of years went to 7.1 per cent. Over three years, that's a 23 per cent increase in your HECS debt. That's what has happened in Australia. That's what has drawn my attention to it.

Let me tell you about Tom. Tom's HECS debt two years ago was $13,609. Then it went to $28,553. Now it has gone to $32,334. That's a remarkable increase. Someone who had a $13,000 HECS debt suddenly has a $32,000 HECS debt. I know that you're interested in gambling, Deputy Speaker. If you were losing that much when you were gambling, you'd be pretty upset! Here we are as a government, actually thinking this is a good idea. I know the background from when John Dawkins was the education minister under Paul Keating. They said, 'We'll give a whole lot of young people who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity the ability to borrow the money from us and then pay us back when they get a job.' It sounds simple, until you realise that today the total HECS debt is $78 billion. Our former students owe the federal government $78 billion. Can you imagine! Is that a cash cow for the federal government, or an asset of the federal government that they claim is an asset on the books? The latter would be right, because, of $78 billion, 10 per cent is an $8 billion a year increase. Five per cent is a $4 billion a year increase added to the debt of young students when they come into the workforce.

None of these payments made throughout the year take into account the time the student's loan it is indexed. Even the rate of indexation, as I said, has dramatically changed from four to seven per cent. That's a massive increase. According to ATO statistics, it's women who hold the majority of student debt in Australia. I'll repeat that: it's women who hold the majority of student debt in Australia. These HECS and HELP debts are further entrenching women's economic disadvantage in this nation. Today, I read that total HECS debt, as I said before, is $78 billion. Since the start of HECS in 1989, $111 billion has been lent through student loans, with a whopping $19 billion added to this debt in the form of indexation. Only $51.5 billion has been repaid since 1989. Our teachers and nurses carry the biggest repayment burden of any group. These are already overwhelmed frontline workers who take on our most essential and critical roles.

In fact, I know multiple women who were mandated to get the COVID injection and lost their jobs. Yes; many were terminated for, as will be put on their reports, so-called gross or serious misconduct, because they refused to submit to an experimental COVID injection. These women now find themselves unable to work in their professions, but they are still lumped with repaying their HECS debts. They're still there. Even if your job is taken away from you by government mandates, your HECS debt is still there.

Now, another report that I read, which will be interesting to you, Deputy Speaker Claydon, is about how HECS and HELP debts have helped entrench women's economic disadvantage. This is important. These are the key points. Women say they are frustrated by the HELP debt system and feel disadvantaged. Women hold the majority of all student debt in Australia. Researchers say the student debt system has exacerbated structural financial inequities between men and women. That's a fact. So why do women have a heavier debt burden? More women undertake university education, but, on average, men can expect to earn higher incomes than women after graduation. That's crazy stuff. There's a maths equation here that simply doesn't add up. Why are we penalising people, especially our frontline workers, who are paying for the privilege of serving our nation?

But there's another double blow lurking for women. Because they're the ones that give birth and necessarily take the most time out of the workforce raising children and they're the ones who pick up the lion's share of other caring obligations, such as caring for elderly parents, they spend significantly longer repaying their debt and then are gravely affected by the reduced amount of superannuation in their nest egg. (Time expired)

Last week a 52-year-old woman from my electorate called me in great distress. Her name is Verity. Previously fit and healthy, Verity told me about the horrific pain and suffering she endured after reluctantly submitting to the COVID injection. Ironically, Verity had been terminated from her job as a midwife due to the mandates because she was waiting for Novavax—a decision she came to after seeing her sister diagnosed with Guillian-Barre syndrome following a Pfizer injection.

Verity outlined the disgraceful treatment she received from the very people who should have given her comfort and solace when she sought treatment for her symptoms. Not one but two doctors accused her of being an anti-vaxxer. She was told us that her reactions meant 'the jab must be working' and that her severe chest pain and inability to breathe was 'just anxiety'.

But it was her parting pleas that struck me hardest. Through loud sobs, she said to me:

Russell, thank you for listening to me—I've been silenced, censored and ridiculed, and felt completely isolated … How can a doctor call me an anti-vaxxer when I took the vaccine?

I'm a politician, and you can ridicule me; we're paid for that. But don't ridicule or abandon these injured people.

I stand with Verity and all the voiceless vaccine injured, including Ro, who is in the gallery today, and Rado and Kara, who are unable to be here due to ill health. I seek leave to table Verity's email.

Leave not granted.

I've been in Adelaide—you were with me, Deputy Speaker Sharkie— when one of those services handed out a tent and some food to a family because they had completely run out of accommodation. This was three years ago now, when we didn't have the crisis we have today. What I'm hearing is that the Home Guarantee Scheme is another scheme from a federal government, when we should be, in my view, getting the money out to the state governments and telling them to get on with the job. They're the ones that are on the ground. The federal government is too far away from the action to be able to do this.

What's happening in my state of Victoria is that one in five of the properties on the market are being sold by landlords because they're sick of the land tax and all the other taxes that they are encumbered with, to the point where they say: 'What's the use of having a rental? This used to be a good investment.' Forty-six per cent of the income of the state government of Victoria comes from property taxes, which the federal government have no control over whatsoever. They have no control over land development. They have no control over land release. They have no control over the opportunities that are there.

Yes, if there is federal land that can be sold off for housing, sell it off, move it. If it's in the right place at the right time, please do that. But, for heaven's sake, all of these plans that I've seen over my 25 years of service in the parliament have all been 'a new plan', 'a new plan', 'a new plan'. Whether it's a revamped plan or a new plan I don't know, because the government don't tell us. They say, 'We've got a new plan.' Whose money are they using? Is it the money that was set aside in this budget, the last budget, the previous budget or the budget before that? I don't know, but it probably goes like this. A public servant walks in and says, 'We need a new name for the same plan'—the same plan that hasn't worked for a long time—'and this will take five years to implement.' You heard the member for Paterson when she said that, faced with this situation, they have a new plan. I think the public servant would have walked in and said, 'Minister, we need a new name for the old plan'—the same plan there was under the Liberals. Do you think that the Liberals, the Nationals and the Independents in this House were not dedicated to doing the best thing with regard to housing on behalf of their constituents? No. Every one of them wanted to do the best thing. The largest cohort of people becoming homeless are women over 50—in a country like Australia! And it's everywhere. It's in our regions and it's in our cities. Women over 50 are either couch surfing, sleeping in cars or going to agencies for help for overnight accommodation. Housing is a really important issue for people in Australia. In a rich country such as ours, we should be getting the stock out there. We might have to make some innovative and different programs, like dongas on blocks in a row, but just put people in decent housing.

As the member for Paterson said, it's great to come home. I've never suffered homelessness, ever, and my children have never gone without a feed. I can't imagine what it would be like to be in the position that so many Australians are today.

Mr BROADBENT (Monash) (17:05): I don't think that the former member for Bennelong ever gave a speech like that one, where he never followed the dictates of the party or the talking points.

Mr Perrett: John Howard?

Mr BROADBENT: Yes. Good man! One thing we know is that Australian families are enduring very difficult times, whether from high rents or mortgages, skyrocketing energy bills or insurance premiums going through the roof. Many families doing a tough right now with rising inflation. I heard a call before, saying that inflation is going down. Go and get a trolley full of groceries and find out if inflation is going down! If you can find inflation is going down—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Mr BROADBENT: then you're not doing the shopping!

Mr Perrett: I do the shopping!

Mr BROADBENT: That's what's happening. You're not seeing the price that families are paying—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Wilkie): The member for Moreton should restrain himself.

Mr BROADBENT: The member for Moreton should never restrain himself! I really appreciate him. I don't want to go across you, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, but I enjoy the member for Moreton; he has been a great contributor to the parliament. He's prepared to stand up and talk about the real issues that are affecting families every day in Moreton, as I do in Monash!

A tub of yoghurt, for instance, used to be about five bucks; last week it was 10! What's going on? I don't think that's supermarket gouging—I don't know what it is—but you can't have a 100 per cent increase in something. Everything I touch is either getting smaller in the packet—smaller jam!—and still larger in price. I'm embarrassed to come home to my wife and say, 'Here's your marmalade.' The tub used to be about this big and now it's only about that big at the same price, if not dearer.

Last week a constituent told me her story. Alison and Dean are in their late 20s, with two young kids aged three and eight months. Up until late last year, Dean had run his own business for five years as a gas plumber. No longer in Victoria: when the Victorian government brought in new legislative changes which meant that gas could not be installed in new homes as of 24 January, Dean was out of a job—along with thousands of other people. Just like that he had to close his business. That's five years of hard work down the drain. Alison planned to have eight full months of maternity leave after giving birth to her second child in July last year. However, due to their financial situation, including the uncertainty of Dean having to find a new job, Alison had to return to work months earlier than expected. The couple now pay $260 week for their two children to attend child care three days a week. Alison told me that there have been weeks when their bank account has been in minus and they've had to wait until payday to be able to pay council rates and insurances. And she's not on her own there, I can tell you. This is because they prioritise their mortgage, childcare fees and ensuring their children are fed before anything else. To add to this, every time their account is in minus, their bank charges them a fee of between $5 and $10. At the moment they're living from pay cheque to pay cheque. At the end of the week, after taking into account the bills and the mortgage, there's not much left to spend, let alone save for a rainy day.

A recent report from the Brotherhood of St Laurence found, quite rightly, that people experiencing poverty and job insecurity are increasingly unable to budget their way out of financial crisis. I know a family that's reticent to go to the doctor because they can't afford the out-of-pocket costs. This is disgraceful in a country like ours; taking a child to the doctor is not discretionary! Apparently, more than 1.2 million Australians—and they would have been in Tasmania too, Deputy Speaker Wilkie—did not go and see a GP during 2022-23 because of the cost. That's twice as many as compared to 2021-22. It's affecting all of us. And then there are people who are rationing their medication in order to make it through to their next payday. This is not good enough in a nation as wealthy and with as strong an economy as we have.

Governments need to redirect their priorities towards those doing it toughest in Australia, towards those who are living independently or who are lonely. We have a responsibility to those who are least able to look after themselves in this country. I haven't stopped addressing those who need the most help since I first came into this place. Right now, this country is facing a crisis of people who need direct help. We have to find ways to give it to them.

I'll follow on from the member for Hunter and say that there have been two scams on my phone today. You had 'Michael Jackson'; I had the 'port authority' or whatever it was telling me I hadn't paid my bill! The point is that the member for Hunter was very right and very clear when he said that the government has spent $86 million, planned over a number of years, to organise this operation. It's beginning to work, but it's not just government's responsibility. It's the responsibility of the individual, the telcos, the banks and anybody else who can do anything we possibly can as a nation, a people and a tribe—tribe Australia. It's your money, your money and your money. One fellow I read about here, after my staff did the research, was about to transfer $25 million. He is an executive—a CEO of an organisation. He was about to transfer, but he made a phone call to his own bank just before he transferred. They said, 'It's a scam.'

My own family member was building a house, and there was a due payment to be made. It a considerable amount of money for the new house they were building, and it was to go to the builder. My brother-in-law was lucky. He knew the builder, who was a friend of his. He knew the daughter was away at the time. When he received the email, which was correct—the money and bank account were correct—it just had a different bank account to be paid into. He said: 'I'll pay it. No, no; I'll give George a ring.' So he gave George a ring. Sure enough, George said: 'No, I haven't changed my bank accounts. They're exactly the same as they were before.' My brother-in-law said, 'This is a definite change to another account.' He would have transferred a substantial amount of money to an organisation; it would have been gone, out of that account, in minutes.

Another lady was insistent after a phone call. She was an older lady. She went through every one of her bank accounts and got all the money out, because that's what she'd been instructed to do. She took it to the Commonwealth Bank to bank it into this particular account. The Commonwealth Bank saved her. They said, 'This is a scam account you're paying into.' Embarrassed, she went back and put all her money back into the other accounts, even though the staff at the other banks had said: 'Are you being scammed? Are you being scammed? Are you being scammed?'

Too many people are being scammed. These people are smart. And they find ways—whatever way they can. They know you well. When I say, 'They know you well,' I mean this. As somebody said, they had the last three digits of their bank card, their name, their wife's name, their children's names and associations they had, and they sounded just like the bank. They will send you documentation that mimics the bank's documentation. You would swear you're actually talking to the organisation that they say they are. I had a Telstra scam, and they had me on the line for 10 minutes before I thought, 'Hang on, why are you asking me these questions about accounts that I don't have?' Then I realised it was a scam. I just thought it was Telstra ringing me, being courteous and looking after me. I was being honoured and favoured. It's great to have them look after you.

I do have proper phone calls from people that say: 'I'm your account manager from such-and-such a bank. You've got some money there; do you want to do something with it?' And it turns out they're legitimate. What we have to do, as a government, is ask, 'Righto, how can we best protect our people?' and actually put the work in. But it's not just about what the government can do, and it can't just be about the banks repaying everything that's lost, because then Australia would just become honeypot for them. They'd know that the banks would repay it, so they'd say, 'Let's get into Australia!' No, we have to be better than; we are better than that. We cannot afford to have $3,000 million taken out of our economy each year. It's money owned by decent individuals—smart, bright people. We can't do that! It has to change and it has to be a whole-of-government, whole-of-banks, whole-of-telcos and whole-of-everybody-else-involved-in-it thing to make the difference. This is our chance now to get onto these people, to make the difference and to make Australia a no-go zone for scammers.

I'm going to ignore the spurious attacks on previous governments by other speakers on this motion, and I'm going to do that for a very good reason. On this day I've got to say that all the governments I have served with or under in this parliament have reflected one of the lines of this motion: 'supporting a cohesive and inclusive multicultural society'. It doesn't matter whether you come from Tasmania—like you, Deputy Speaker Archer—or from New South Wales, Queensland or Victoria. A number of members have claimed that they have the most multicultural community in the whole of Australia. The member for Bruce claims—with some veracity, I think—that he has the most multicultural electorate in Victoria. There are those on each side who, as we heard from the member for Fowler, would say: 'No. I have the most multicultural community; here are the figures and here are the numbers.'

What is beautiful, broad and brazen about this whole Australian community is that we are changing, as we always knew we would, as time goes on. I can remember in this place when the word 'multiculturalism' was an absolute no-no. It started with the New South Wales state government removing the word 'multiculturalism' from any ministry, and then the same thing happened in the federal parliament. I grew up in a multicultural community called Koo Wee Rup. We could say then we had the most diverse European community of all towns, but it wasn't really, because there was also Werribee and all around Melbourne. The Italians dominated our communities; they came in poor and they worked hard, and their children worked hard. Their children were well educated, and they went on to do really good things. The people who came here from Sicily were tiny little people, because they'd been starved for generations. If you could see their sons and daughters now, three generations down the line—talk about two axe handles wide and six axe handles high! These are big people, and they have prospered. It's not only the Italians but also the Germans and the Yugoslavs, as we called them then. That name has changed a few times over the years. We had them all, and they came here to build a community.

In my electorate of Monash, we have people who had worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme and then came to work for the state electricity commission or in the open-cut mines in the Latrobe Valley, which have been an absolute blessing for Victoria. Just as Tasmania has the gift of hydroelectric power, where fourth-fifths of all of Tasmania's power comes from hydroelectricity, Victoria had this golden opportunity out of the Latrobe Valley. It was built by Monash and his team—my electorate is named after him—and it supplied Victoria's manufacturing community with cheap electricity, allowing them to be one of the most powerful manufacturing states in the world from the early 1930s through to the 1960s. That changed when all of a sudden we decided to say: 'We want renewable energy. We're not going to look at that brown coal as gold anymore; we're going to look at it as a pollutant.' Power stations that were to be built in the Latrobe Valley were abandoned, and now we're about to lose two more. I fear for our nation not because of its multicultural status but because this government is leading us on the way to a very poor future.

I read today, that finally NSW Health looks set to scrap its useless, redundant and discriminatory Covid mandates.

But we’re still waiting for Victoria to drop its three jab or no work policy.

I still receive heartbreaking calls from doctors, nurses, firies, police officers and paramedics who were terminated from their jobs – many of them charged with ‘serious misconduct’ - for not submitting to the experimental covid jab.

Mind you, even in the midst of their distress and suffering at the injustices perpetrated against them, not one of them regrets not getting it.

And why would they?

With unprecedented rates of excess deaths, heart attacks, strokes, turbo cancer and auto-immune disease, thousands of esteemed doctors and academics across the world continue to plead for the mRNA jabs to be banned.

Let me be clear, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear there’s no shortage of peer-reviewed, scientific evidence.  It’s just not being reported on mainstream news.

I know doctors are hearing reports of adverse injuries in their patients but are too afraid to speak up for fear of retribution from AHPRA.

What happened to the doctor’s oath of first do no harm?

I say to doctors across Australia, it’s not too late to stand up and share your concerns.

I don't mind if the government have programs and they say things before an election campaign about what they're going to do in regard to housing. But don't then tell me 100 times that you're going to reduce the cost of power—as the previous member just said, they have a power reduction program—by $275. You said that time after time after time, and people in my electorate listened to you, understood what you were saying and supported you. A whole four per cent of them decided to move towards the Labor Party and away from my position. People thought, 'I'm going to be $275 better off if I vote Labor.' What has happened? They haven't had a $275 reduction.

But then Labor said, 'Oh, no, we've got five years to do that.' The trouble is that the Prime Minister didn't say that during the election campaign. He didn't say, 'In five years time I'll give you a $275 cut.' He just said, 'I'll give you a $275 cut.' It's sort of a reversal of the 'Mediscare' campaign from the previous election. It's a promise to say, 'I'm going to give you this,' but then they don't give it to you. You can understand that people are under pressure, and all the previous speakers have recognised that people are under pressure from power prices and a lot of state government costs, like your water and your electricity. When has the federal government come along and said, 'Here's what we can do for you'? It hasn't happened.

What happens in your new housing program, whatever it's called, which we just debated in the House and went through—it's another first home buyer type scheme; oh, it's the Help to Buy program—when the market intervenes, people can't pay for some reason, their interest rates go too high and they're under pressure?

I went to get a punctured tyre repaired, and the guy repairing the tyre said, 'You're the politician, aren't you?' And I said yes, but I was trying to hide it, with the way I was dressed. He said, 'Do you know my mortgage has gone up 1,500 bucks?' This guy is running and is part owner of a very good tyre business. They've always looked after me very well in Pakenham and always been great. He said: 'It's 1,500 bucks, mate. That's what it's costing me over and above what I was paying.' He said, 'I have to find that money.'

I recently had a very well-paid person come to me and say, 'Russell, you don't understand how high the mortgage is that we've got to pay.' Well, no, I don't understand how high his mortgage is, because when I took out the mortgage on the small farm that I'm on it was $30,000. Then, in the next episode, from others that I've heard about, their mortgages went to $60,000, then $80,000, then $150,000 and then $200,000. When I asked a young girl who worked with me for a while, Priscilla, what she'd borrowed to get into her unit in Parkdale, or wherever it was, she said $400,000. I was in shock. Now people are borrowing $1 million. For some of the people these days who have borrowed that sort of money, a tiny change in interest rates is catastrophic. And they all believed that interest rates wouldn't change for a long time. As we heard from the member who spoke before, people come up to you and say, 'I've just moved from a fixed loan to a variable loan, and the price has gone through the roof for me.' And this has happened to thousands of people across Australia. I learned very quickly that people are now relying not only on their income but also on their savings. They're using up their savings just to survive at the moment.

Governments should be very aware of the electorate when people are under pressure, because they will have regard for everything you say, all the time, about what you're going to do. And if you don't do it beware, because the people will be coming for you.

I seconded this motion for a reason: I seconded this motion so that this parliament would discuss the issue around the size of the market held by supermarkets. Philosophically, I probably don't sit well with the motion that Mr Katter has put forward but I'm happy to second it so that the parliament can have the discussion.

Access to healthy, fresh food should not be a luxury in this country. We all realise the prices people are paying at the moment seem to be inflated beyond their control and beyond the household budget. What we're facing here is that the market dominance of the supermarkets is probably unprecedented in nations around the world. If we compare ourselves with the UK, the biggest player in their market is around 28 per cent. In the US the biggest player in the market is around 25 per cent. In Australia the biggest player in the market is 37 per cent. With our second biggest player having a larger nominal share than the share that the largest supermarket in the US has, just two supermarkets account for 60 per cent of the market share and prove how lacking competition is in the sector. You already know which two supermarkets I'm talking about.

Of course, there's a choice. In Melbourne you can seek out a retailer that may be a long way away from you but will give you a better price. I asked a customer the other day—I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to name names here—in the ALDI store, 'Do you believe you get a better price shopping at ALDI than you do at the major supermarkets?' She said: 'Absolutely. This is my major shop for the week.' It was about $275 for her major shop. She lives with her daughter. In that process, she said, 'Yes, I think I'm this many dollars better off by shopping at that particular store.' So in Australia you can still seek out, if you're prepared to look and travel, opportunities for independent supermarkets.

Where I have a problem with the bill put forward is that, even though the member for Hasluck a few minutes ago outlined all the programs that the government has in place to fight against the monopoly, the market happens very quickly. I'm a former retailer. The market happens on that day in that week in that time. By the time all the inquiries that you might have with the ACCC or any other body over price gouging are held and done, the damage is done. It's all over—it's finished—for the retailer. In my own area, when a major player in the market in my industry came in to my community, I knew that our retail model was over, finished, gone. It took a long time for me to explain that to my family—that we were now finished—because we couldn't compete in the marketplace with such an enormous organisation. Therefore, businesses like mine disappeared not just in my area but right across Australia because the big organisation came in and took over from the very small.

In the inquiry that's currently going on in Australia with regard to food prices—or whatever the inquiry is called—it was really interesting to hear the apple growers and what they're going through at the moment and the fact that many of them are ripping their plants out of the ground because they can't put apples on the shelf—you'd know this in South Australia—because of what it costs them to produce it. In fact, the gap is enormous. Some of their produce is perfect to eat, but, because it's slightly the wrong colour, it gets rejected, for heaven's sake. So 30 per cent of this beautiful product here in Australia is thrown out or sent back to the grower just to be ploughed in or thrown down the tip.

What I'm putting to the House is that it's good to have this discussion around how we deliver food into households in Australia but remember that we're dealing with a marketplace which is moving quickly every day and you've got to be a very big supplier to supply a very big supermarket. So the smaller man is left out. If you want that change, you have to change how you are supporting the smaller operators and the smaller growers.

A lot happened in Canberra this week.

Watch my video to see what I got up to in the Nation's Capital.

Russell Broadbent MP
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