Mr VIOLI (Casey) (16:36): It's good to hear the member for Higgins talk about mental health, and it is great that we have instigated the social media ban. It's a little bit disappointing we didn't hear her speak out when her government slashed the number of Medicare funded mental health sessions from 20 to 10, despite the reports saying that it should stay at 20. That is just one of many examples that I will talk about. The Albanese Labor government is heading in the wrong direction and letting down the Australian people. It is clear. If you speak to anyone in the community, there is not one Australian that is doing better today than they were in May 2022, when the Prime Minister promised that he had a plan to ease the cost-of-living crisis that Australians were facing—although we did hear from the member for Swan that apparently things have improved in the last six months, which I found staggering; things have got better which have never been better. I assumed that it was just the Prime Minister and the Treasurer that were completely out of touch and that the backbench had to sit quietly and weren't able to tell them, but it appears that the backbench also think that the Australian people have never had it better, the crisis is over and things are going well. In the real world, when you talk to community groups, you hear a different story. The member for Menzies, my good friend, mentioned food banks in his community. Well, I've also been talking to charities and food banks in my community. In the last two weeks, two food banks that I went to visit, completely independently of each other, referenced the working poor that they are now looking after. To quote Discovery Community Care: 'the working poor category has been the biggest growth demographic for us in 2024. We have grown by 400 per cent since March 2024.' Yet those opposite have the audacity to stand here today and tell us that it's all going well: 'We've never had better, it is improving, the cost-of-living crisis has been solved,' as the member for Swan said. It's all part of the spin of this government. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have been talking about the inflation rate this week, but they don't talk about the true mean inflation, which is the true inflation rate that the RBA governor looks at when they decide as a board what's going to happen with interest rates. The reason they won't talk about the true mean inflation is that it actually went up in October. It went from 3.2 per cent in September to 3.5 per cent in October, pushing back any chance of a rate cut in the near future, because the RBA governor has said she will continue to look past the artificial nature of the energy subsidies of the Treasurer and the Prime Minister. Another thing those opposite don't like to talk about since the election is that promise to reduce energy prices by $275. They made that promise 97 times before the election, and it hasn't been echoed since. Early on in the term, we got some interjections from those opposite: 'Well, we said it would happen by 2025.' Guess what? We're on the doorstep of 2025, and energy bills have not gone down by $275 for the Australian people. The data shows that, when the subsidies come off, they will increase significantly next year. There would have been a 16 per cent increase in energy prices if it wasn't for that rebate. Prices are continuing to go up. This is a government that is focused on the symptoms and the political spin. They have no answers to the genuine challenges of the Australian people or to ease the cost-of-living crisis. They have to address productivity. That is the core issue that we are facing at the moment. Productivity has fallen 6.3 per cent under this government, but those opposite have no plans, policies or actions to address the productivity crisis that we are facing in Australia. The reality is that in May 2022 this Prime Minister promised he had a plan for the Australian people, but 2½ years later that plan has failed. There is not one Australian that is better off today than they were in May 2022. We have an out-of-touch Prime Minister who is weak and is not making the right decisions for the Australian people. For those residents that go to food banks that are feeling the pain and are suffering three weeks before Christmas, there is no end in sight to the pain that they feel, and this government has no answers to the challenges and crisis facing the Australian public.