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Opposition outlines priorities in Budget-in-Reply speech focusing on economic management and key commitments

Opposition Budget reply criticises Labor for broken promises, higher costs, energy policy and regional neglect, while outlining alternative plan focused on cheaper energy, infrastructure investment, lower taxes and growth strategy.

By news@gippsland - 14th May 2026 - Back to News

Labor’s Budget of broken promises sells out regional Australia and, by doing so, sells out the future of all Australians. In our lucky country, we should be able to promise younger Australians a wealthier, healthier and easier life than the one we had. Every generation of Australians has not only made that promise but delivered upon it.

Labor’s Budget is criticised for broken promises, alleged regional neglect and failing the intergenerational social contract of rising prosperity

Labor’s Budget is criticised for broken promises, alleged regional neglect and failing the intergenerational social contract of rising prosperity

Budget promises broken

Labor’s Budget breaks promises but, worse still, it breaches the intergenerational social contract of ever rising prosperity that has bound generations of Australians together. Tonight, I commit that The Nationals and the Liberals will always fight to hand on a stronger and wealthier country than the one we inherited. We will never give up on the potential of the Australian nation and its people.

  • Labor’s own Budget forecasts higher inflation, lower real wages and fewer homes because of its broken promises on tax
  • Labor has given up on economic growth
  • Labor has given up on cheaper energy
  • Labor has given up on building the roads, rail and dams that could unlock our nation
  • Labor has given up on controlling our borders
  • Labor has given up on the cost of living

After four years of higher prices and lower wages, Labor has given up on Australia. This week they flew the white flag.

Regional voices matter

I am from Queensland, and I will never give up. I will never give up fighting for Australians. I will never give up on our great nation and its promise to be the best country in the world. We can make life better, but to do so we must use our country. We must develop our farming, mining, energy and tourism industries.

Australia's extraordinary economic success has been underpinned by using our natural resources. It is the natural wealth of regional Australia that will provide the springboard to a better future for all Australians.

  • I have spoken with thousands of regional Australians over the past two months in southern NSW during the Farrer by-election
  • I spoke with Sam, a café owner, who told me rising costs are making it harder to keep his doors open
  • I spoke with Emily, a young mother, who says it is becoming almost impossible to raise a family with the soaring cost of living
  • I spoke with Simon, a farmer near Griffith, who worries whether he can plant a crop given skyrocketing water, fuel and fertiliser costs
  • I spoke with Mary, a pensioner, who fears rising health insurance premiums following Labor’s cuts
  • I spoke with Vicki, who has been waiting two years for a knee replacement operation

Anthony Albanese has not just broken promises to Sam, Emily, Simon, Mary and Vicki - he has let them down. He has let them down because this Budget does nothing to reduce the cost of living, make it easier to employ people in small business or farming, or tackle the waiting lists in our hospitals.

Budget cost concerns

Instead, Labor’s Budget disappears into a mess of unworkable tax increases that confuse Australians, punish aspiration and fail even to deliver the promised benefits. Labor’s own Budget papers admit that its tax policies will result in fewer homes being built. So how can reducing housing supply possibly help Australians buy their first home? You can’t tax your way to more houses.

Labor is not listening to the Australian people. Australians want life to be easier again, and that means we must reduce the cost of everyday items. It is now more expensive to buy Tim Tams in Australia than it is in Canada.

Just like Tim Tams, Australian factories now pay more for electricity than factories in Japan. Yet we are one of Japan’s largest energy suppliers. So why can’t Australians enjoy cheaper power than the countries that we export energy to? The answer is because Japan continues to build coal and gas-fired power stations, and reopen nuclear power stations, while Labor remains obsessed with net zero.

Energy reform plan

A future Liberal and Nationals government will scrap Labor’s net zero target. We will restore the principle that Australia’s energy system should be run with one overriding objective: delivering the lowest possible power prices for Australians.

  • Our plan will be cheaper, better and fairer
  • Our plan will be cheaper because we will use all of our natural resources, and more energy supply means lower prices
  • Our plan will be better because lower power prices will revive manufacturing and unlock new opportunities, including in artificial intelligence and advanced industries
  • We should not ban energy sources. Coal, gas, nuclear and renewables all have a role to play. Australia needs the best fit of energy sources for different needs
  • Our plan will be fairer because Australia will no longer cut emissions at a rate far beyond the rest of the developed world. Under Labor’s targets, Australia is expected to reduce emissions at roughly three times faster than comparable developed nations

The Treasurer’s speech on Tuesday night was his first Budget speech to not promise to lower energy prices. Indeed, there was no mention of the cost of energy at all. The cost of energy is the most important issue raised with me by families and businesses, yet our government has taken a monastic vow of silence on energy prices. The only explanation is that they are embarrassed because under Labor, electricity prices have risen by 40 per cent.

Mining investment zero

The Treasurer mentioned net zero just once, almost as an afterthought, and did not mention climate change at all. Yet net zero is collapsing around the world while Australians continue paying the price for it here at home. Over the past year alone, Labor has committed another $18 billion to net zero spending.

At the same time, Labor continues to spend recklessly, with another $9 billion in new policy spending next year alone. Labor is ignoring the Reserve Bank’s warnings that excessive government spending is driving up interest rates. When interest rates rise, regional Australia suffers most. New investments in mines and farms become unviable. Under Labor’s higher interest rate settings, investment growth slows dramatically in this Budget, with mining investment growth forecast to fall to zero by 2028.

That is not a misprint. Labor’s Budget forecasts ZERO growth in mining investment within two years. Labor promised that net zero would unleash a critical minerals boom, yet instead the only thing that went to zero was growth in mining investment.

Infrastructure funding cuts

Once again, Labor has abandoned workers in the mining industry because it has offered no credible plan to reverse this decline. Nor is the shortfall in private investment being offset by nation-building infrastructure. This Budget strips more than $9 billion from rail and road funding.

Labor has effectively pulled up stumps on Inland Rail while it remains only half complete. Inland Rail is exactly the kind of nation-building investment Australia needs. It would free up our roads, reduce freight costs, help our farmers and lower prices.

Yet the government is stripping $6 billion from the project in a false economy that will cost Australia dearly in the long term. And then Labor uses these savings to give another $3.8 billion to the Suburban Melbourne Rail project that has failed scrutiny.

Regional funding fairness

The Liberals and Nationals will fight this short-sighted decision, and I thank the councils, businesses and regional communities that are standing up for their future. The government has announced $5.5 billion in new infrastructure spending, yet less than $50 million not even one per cent will go to regional Australia.

This budget does not deliver the intergenerational equity promised, but it does deliver geographical inequity. The Liberals and Nationals will instead invest in infrastructure that lowers the cost of doing business and strengthens our national economy. This government has already squandered one mining boom and now risks wasting another through reckless spending and economic complacency.

Australia must give young people a fair go by saving for the future when high coal, gas and iron ore prices deliver rivers of gold to Canberra. That is why we will place 80 cents of every mining windfall dollar into a Future Generations Fund. One quarter of that fund will be dedicated to a Regional Australia Future Generations Fund, investing directly back into the regions that generated the wealth in the first place.

Regional investment loss

The wealth generated by mining booms comes from regional Australia, and it is only fair that some of that wealth is reinvested there. Those investments will support productivity-enhancing infrastructure that diversifies and grows regional economies, while also helping attract more Australians to regional communities.

Labor has also scrapped funding for the National Water Grid. When the Liberals and Nationals left government, we left them a clear pipeline of new dams and water infrastructure, but Labor has abandoned the expansion of Australian agriculture.

Australia has enormous potential to build dams, expand farming and produce more food for the world. Yet Labor has made it harder to live and work in regional Australia. Labor continues to demonstrate they will always sell out regional Australia - whether it’s spending $40 million on the EU FTA to enshrine the worst trade deal ever or Labor’s continued demonisation of law-abiding firearm owners.

Regional support needed

The government has provided no tangible support for regional tourism providers or farmers who are struggling with high fuel and operating costs. Australia needs more families and more children, which means giving parents more freedom over how they raise their children. The Finance Minister’s insensitive comments on Mother’s Day - suggesting that a mother could simply be replaced by a childcare worker - were not only insulting, but wrong.

Children benefit enormously from regular time with their mothers and fathers. Parents would love to spend more time with their children, but Labor’s inflation and taxes make that increasingly difficult. Labor’s answer is always more subsidies and more red tape, yet government interference has only driven childcare fees even higher - assuming families can find a childcare place at all.

We will put parents back in charge by giving families more options, whether through childcare or by supporting parents who choose to care for their children at home. To deliver more homes across the regions, the Liberal and Nationals will establish a $5 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund with 30% targeted for enabling infrastructure to unlock new housing in regional Australia.

Migration housing pressure

We will never solve the housing crisis by endlessly cramming more people into Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Not every young Australian will move to the regions, but every person who does will relieve pressure on housing markets in our major cities.

Australia must build new cities to relieve pressure on our capital cities. That will take time. In the short term, migration must once again reflect the needs of Australians. Once again, Labor has missed its migration targets in this Budget. That means even more people competing for an increasingly scarce housing supply.

  • We will cap migration in line with housing builds. We cannot bring more and more people into Australia while some Australians must live in tents
  • We will ensure that those who come to Australia share Australian values. Those who do not share those values will be deported
  • We will no longer rely on Labor’s lazy approach of artificially inflating economic statistics through mass migration
  • We do not need mass migration to deliver high economic growth. And we will oppose Labor’s tax increases and repeal them when we get into government
  • We need tax to go down, the cost of living to go down, and we need living standards to go up

While Labor has no plan to lift the economic growth and economic prospects of Australians. We do.

Vision for Australia

Australia already has everything it needs to succeed. We are the only nation on Earth that occupies an entire continent. We have the land, the resources, the water, the people and the ingenuity to shape our own destiny with more jobs, more wealth and more opportunity. Banjo Paterson wrote of the great "plains extended" of our nation and we need to aim for the horizon again.

  • We need to use our country
  • We need more oil
  • We need more gas
  • We need more coal-fired power stations
  • We need more dams, roads and rail lines
  • We need more factories
  • We need more homes
  • We need more babies
  • We need more of Australia

Or, as I like to call it, we need a Hyper Australia. Labor may have given up on Australia, but we never will. A Liberal and Nationals government will restore trust, restore confidence, restore hope and restore the belief that Australia’s best days lie ahead.

Pictures from Victorian Farmers Federation website.


Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: news@gippsland.com



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