Members of Parliament return to Canberra for first sitting week of the year

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Peter Dutton has issued a rallying cry to the Coalition party room on the first parliamentary sitting day of the year.  Both sides of politics are beginning their pitch to voters with the federal election around the corner.

Transcript

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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