00:00Peter Dutton has revved up the coalition party room, accusing federal Labor of losing its
00:08way.
00:09Peter Dutton arguing that Australians have been let down by the government over the cost
00:13of living.
00:14And he says that Anthony Albanese is out of touch or living in a parallel universe.
00:19No doubt the phrases will continue to hear from the opposition as the federal election
00:24campaign begins in earnest.
00:26As we know, the official federal parliamentary sitting fortnight commenced today here in
00:32Canberra.
00:33And two political areas of tension or where we expect there to be a bit of a fight over
00:38this fortnight, the issue of security and anti-Semitism.
00:42Mr Dutton using these remarks to the party room to question why Anthony Albanese did
00:48not reference the recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks when the prime minister addressed
00:53the Labor Party faithful in a similar rallying speech yesterday.
00:57Mr Dutton says that generally he senses a mood for change among voters.
01:01There are families who thought two and a half years ago that this was going to be a government
01:07for them and this was going to be a prime minister who understood their concerns.
01:12It's been anything but that.
01:14There are families who are hurting all over the country.
01:16There are 27,000 small businesses now who have failed.
01:20There's been a threefold increase in the number of manufacturing businesses that have
01:23closed over the course of the last two and a half years.
01:27And it is not getting better.
01:29What we do know is that the government has lost its way.
01:33We know that the prime minister is not up to his task.
01:36Delavia Labor has returned fire over a coalition election commitment.
01:41You could say a bit of a political food fight has emerged over the coalition's proposal
01:46to allow small businesses to tax deduct some work lunches.
01:50So essentially what we've seen is Labor tasking Treasury to conduct the costings on this.
01:56They've crunched the numbers and come back saying that it would cost $1.6 billion a year
02:02to the taxpayer.
02:04The coalition though disputes these figures.
02:06They say analysis conducted by the Parliamentary Budget Office comes in substantially cheaper
02:13at $250 million over the two years that this policy would exist.
02:19It's led to the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, to write to Stephen Kennedy.
02:24He is the department secretary for Treasury.
02:28He's accused Labor of politicising the public service.
02:31I did put this to Mr Albanese earlier and this was his response.
02:35This is the worst, sloppiest policy put forward by any opposition that I've seen in my entire
02:42time since I've been in Parliament and that was a while ago.
02:48This shows they are simply not fit as an alternative government.
02:53They have opposed every cost of living measure and this is all they've come up with.
02:59So a bit of a change of tune there from both the opposition leader and Prime Minister in
03:03a contrast to their remarks about unity when they spoke outside the church this morning
03:09following that start to the parliamentary year.
03:14When it comes to the legislative agenda and what's happening in Parliament more generally
03:18over the course of this sitting fortnight, Labor's still got a few things to tick off.
03:23They'd like to strengthen hate speech laws, introduce new superannuation tax reforms as
03:28well as electoral reform.
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