Senator GROGAN (South Australia) (16:12): What we have in front of us is a motion that starts off with the line: That the Labor government has delivered a budget that does not have a plan to tackle inflation … Well, we do have a plan to tackle inflation, a fully articulated one. There are pages and pages of description in the budget papers. It's all there to read. We've had various members in the lower house and in the Senate stand up and talk about the kinds of things that we're doing and the exact details of what we're doing. The fact that you don't like it doesn't mean it's not there. There is a serious issue with some of the scaremongering, spin and hoo-ha that goes on. There really is a lot of detail in those budget papers that goes through quite clearly exactly what it is we are intending to do and exactly what it is that we are doing to curb inflation. Yesterday I stood in here and I spoke about the positive side, the upside, the relief side, the kinds of things that we are doing to help Australians across this country deal with what is a serious cost-of-living challenge. We saw it coming, and it's getting worse. It wasn't invented, as some around here would say, on 21 May last year, when Labor was elected. You cannot end up in the kind of situation we are in now in that space of time. The housing crisis that we are seeing is significantly about housing stock and supply. Where is the housing? We have seen 10 years of the coalition government doing very little, seeing these challenges coming down the road and actively choosing to do nothing about it. We are now in a situation where the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is $10 billion—we've heard time and time again this afternoon that there is no detail. Well, there is a very lengthy explanatory memorandum. There is an awful lot of information, an awful lot of detail. Again, just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't there. So take the time, read the EM, then maybe think about what $10 billion of investment would do for the people in this country who are struggling to find somewhere to live. I have spoken in this place before about my story, my lived experience, of being in abject crisis. When I was three months pregnant, the doctors told me and my partner that our child was likely to be born with a disability. That was alarming. My partner then decided that he couldn't handle that, and he left. I then became unwell, and the doctor told me that I had to give up my job or I would not be able to keep my baby. I chose to keep my baby and lose the partner, and it was really hard. It was really, really hard. But what got me through those times were exactly the things we're talking about. The sole parent pension was my lifeline, and my Medicare card was my saviour. I had access to those payments when in the space of three short months I had gone from being very happy, being very comfortable, having a rosy future, to having nowhere to live. I was sleeping under the kitchen bench at a friend's house. So I get pretty wound up when I listen to some of the rubbish that has been spoken about in here this week. A $10 billion investment in housing will help people like me at that point of their life—affordable housing, social housing, support for women fleeing domestic violence. We have to do something about the situation we are in. You may not like it. I'm sure that if the Libs, Nats or Greens were in government they would do something else, but they're not. This is our plan. This is the plan that we took to the Australian people, and the majority of them said: 'Yes, that looks like a good plan. We'll take that.' Here we are now, in this chamber, with no action happening. Everyone is filibustering, everyone is trying to avoid a debate and doing anything but bring on this bill. Is that because you are all afraid that if you vote it down the Australian people will actually be a bit pissed? The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): Senator Grogan, we all hear the importance of the personal story you're bringing to the Senate, and it can be very emotive to speak in that way. I just ask that you respect the dignity of the chamber. Senator GROGAN: My apologies. I go back to how we got here. In part it's through 10 years of neglect in our energy system, 10 years of denying any form of energy transition—hiding under a rock, as far away from the rest of the world as we can get—and doing nothing on housing. We have to change. Something has to change. That's why the country voted out the previous government. It's time to just move on. We have to take action. We have to do something meaningful. We actually have to change what we're doing and how we're doing it, to respond to the situation we find ourselves in. The war in Ukraine, that hideous war in Ukraine, has driven a tsunami across our supply chain. It has meant enormous increases in the prices of goods. It has impacted energy prices, food prices—you name it. We've seen so many challenges, and they've all come home to roost. We have to do something. The Albanese Labor government has set forward a budget—a sensible, responsible and balanced budget—that brings down the amount of interest we're paying on the hideous debt that we were left. That helps us over the long term. I think this is one of the issues that we're not really seeing come through here. The structural changes that we have made in this budget will make a fundamental difference to the ability of this country to respond to the situation we're in, to lower our debt, to lower our interest payments, to lower inflation and to lift the people in this country who need assistance. We have significant ideological differences, and I think it's time to acknowledge and accept that and realise that us doing something you don't like is okay. Ideologically, the coalition are very much about the survival of the fittest, the primacy of the wealthy and the free market. And that's fine. The coalition have that view, but we have a slightly different view. Senator Scarr: I didn't read that on my membership application, Senator Grogan—the primacy of the wealthy! Senator GROGAN: I may well have read it on your membership application form! The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I'll call the senators to order. If you want to have a chat outside, please go ahead. But conversation across the chamber is disorderly. Senator GROGAN: We believe that the government should step in with targeted, strategic relief for those who need it. We want to make sure that we reduce the waste within the budget, that we look into every single crack and crevice to see how we can make sure that every single dollar of government spend is absolutely the right thing to do, that it is totally defensible and that integrity is critical. And that is what we're doing. Have we got to a point of saying, 'Yes, look, everything's fixed'? No, not at all. There is a long way to go. But the budget that Senator Bragg is talking about in this motion takes a significant step on that road to recovery to make a difference to those people who desperately need it, to make our economy stronger for the whole of the country, to impact every single Australian and to have a stronger, more sustainable economy, and that's exactly what we've done. Bearing in mind the differences we have, sometimes our way of doing it is because we're in government and your way of doing it is for when you're in government, and I'd just like to say that Labor is in government now. This is our plan, this is the plan that we took to the election and this is what the majority of the country voted for. I'm going to go back to the inflation piece, just briefly, because I saw an interesting article this morning from someone who you wouldn't say was a close ally of the Labor Party or the Labor government, and that's Terry McCrann. In this morning's article, he said: The budget is not going to increase inflation and force the Reserve Bank to whack us with more interest rate hikes. He then went on to say: Yes, the RBA is likely to hike rates … But any such rate hikes will have nothing—and I mean, nothing, nada, zip—to do with the budget. He then goes on to say a whole range of other, entertaining things. But the point here—what I'm trying to get at—is we have a different ideological perspective and we need to just accept that. Listening to the spin, the scaremongering and the bother is really frustrating. It is okay to just say, 'Well, we disagree with the approach you are taking but we get that this is an important thing that needs to get done.' And, while we are about it—I'll reference friends over here in the Greens party, because $10 billion is not enough in their world—$10 billion is enough for right now. If that is not enough, if the crisis increases and we find that isn't enough, we can do something else. But right here, right now, we have to do something about the housing crisis and the best thing to do right here, right now, is to pass the bill. The longer we drag this out, the more filibustering there is, the longer people have to wait, because you don't build a house overnight. It takes a while. So I would just plead with the people in this chamber to look deeper than the spin and the bother. What we're doing here with this budget is sensible, is responsible and is taking that first strategic and significant step to protect this country, to build the housing we need, to support the people who need it, and to strengthen and build our economy.