Peter Dutton said a key election promise was abandoned, accusing the government of hoisting the white flag on providing financial relief from rising electricity prices.
Opposition leaders used their first budget response speech on Thursday night to attack the Albanian government’s budget for not providing adequate cost of living measures at a time of inflation and rising electricity prices.
But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hit back on Friday morning, calling it “the weakest budget I’ve seen in politics”.
Mr Dutton said the government had abandoned a key campaign promise to lower electricity bills by $275 a year.
“Workers are hunting for opportunities to try to cover themselves for breaking promises,” he said on ABC’s 7.30 show.
“The problem is, as Labor finds out when they come to power, they can’t control the economy and certainly can’t control the prices of electricity and gas. They raised the white flag.”
The budget provided predicts that retail electricity prices will rise by more than 50% over the next two years, while retail gas prices will rise by 40%.
Labor has touted the first budget as responsible for providing targeted cost-of-living measures without adding to decades of already high inflation.
Dutton said more gas needs to be supplied to the energy market to ensure that electricity prices are brought down and that a certain level of nuclear energy can be “discussed” on the grid.
“I don’t want to see my family go out of power. I don’t want to see my business cut off,” he said.
“We need to bring more (gas) supply into the market. I think most economists are aware of that.”
Albanese responded Friday morning, saying the coalition had not outlined future plans.
“It’s the first budget proposal that didn’t have any new initiatives or new policies,” he told Seven.
“He didn’t say anything about the future, and Peter Dutton will have to do much better than that. On Tuesday night, we had a budget to meet all of our comments.
The coalition continues to support the first home-buying plan that will give people access to old-age pensions, even though the prime minister said it would raise house prices while hurting people’s retirement benefits. pointed out.
Opposition leaders used Thursday’s speech to further push for a controversial third phase of tax cuts set to take effect in 2024.
The policy, enacted by the former coalition government, has been criticized for offering tax cuts to wealthy Australians, but Dutton said it would provide millions of Australians with further financial relief.
“You should keep more of what you earn and hard working Australians should be rewarded. The best reward for hard work is tax breaks,” he said.
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Australian Associated Press is an Australian news agency.