Garth Hamilton (Groom, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge your request, Deputy Speaker Claydon. This is the last MPI of the week, and I will try and dial it down. But the muse is with me a little bit here, because I've heard the most honest thing I've ever heard from Labor in my two weeks here! It's been fantastic: 'Don't worry about the cost. Don't worry about the cost. It's just a little, itsy-bitsy thing. Don't worry about it. Put it over here. Forget about it. Don't worry about the costs! You don't need to think about it.' Oh, my goodness! That's fantastic! I couldn't have done that better. I'll grab that clip later on and beam it in to Groom. Fantastic!

We have heard lots of great words from Labor. Thank you very much for your wonderful contributions. There are a couple of words they didn't say, like '$275'.

A government member: A trillion dollars in debt.

I'll get to that number, but that's a good number too. 'Two hundred and seventy-five dollars.' They can't say it. No-one could say it. It's amazing. All this opportunity to talk about this MPI, and they can't say the words, '$275'. It's a great word. Try it out. It's fantastic: 275. It's poetic. It rolls out of you. It's magnificent! It's an absolutely magnificent couple of worlds that come together. They are wonderful.

The other one is fantastic too, because I hear this often. Let's address it: a trillion dollars worth of debt, every dollar of which you agreed to.

A government member: No we didn't!

You damn did. Absolutely you did. And it would have been more debt if we had followed all of your policy suggestions, so let's go down this path.

We are a very short time into this term of government and already this government has hit the fork in the road: 'Do we do what we said we would do, or do we walk away from our commitments?' We saw the government today in question time give a wonderful Dorothy Dixer about how good they were. It was the best question we've ever seen: 'How good are Labor?' It was fantastic. Absolutely wonderful. Here we are already. We're about to go home on Thursday. We're about to go home, and Labor have already left this promise behind. They've already walked away from this. It's already gone.

We acknowledge the need for balance in a conversation on energy. That little issue of cost is important. It's an important thing. Let's be fair; Labor dabbled in balance. They dabbled. They thought about it, they had a little, modest dabble—a 'dabblet' maybe; I don't know. They thought they'd have a go at this. They said: 'Yes, absolutely. We've got this target and we're going to reduce emissions and we're going to reduce your energy bills by this much.' It really was a good start, until they got elected. It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where he gets the hire car: 'You took the reservation; you didn't hold the reservation.' Guys, I've got to be honest. You made the commitment, and that was awesome. It was great. You made the commitment, but you've got to hold the commitment. You've got to hold it. That's the important part. That's what we're looking for. George is laughing to himself in the background over here. It's absolutely fantastic.

But this $275 is no laughing matter. It's been raised before. Today I had a text from a constituent telling me about her texts from her landlord to say rent is going up $50 a week. That's in Centenary Heights. Those are the real cost-of-living pressures we're experiencing across the country. This is what's on people's minds. Cost-of-living pressures writers are there; they are real. We're feeling it across the country. Whilst this is happening, in the light of this, this is the moment that Labor choose to flip-flop and walk away completely from their commitment. Again, $275 is a beautiful couple of words, absolutely fantastic, and they walk away from it. They said, 'Vote for us and we'll do this,' then they got elected—

An opposition member: Give him an extension!

Absolutely, I'll take the extension. But now they're at the part where they're saying: 'Yeah, nah, we're going to walk away from that. That's not what we're about.' It's been so clear. This is the best example—you know what? Maybe this isn't the best example of a flip-flop we'll get from this government. Maybe they've got ambitions to go higher. Maybe we'll see better flip-flops, but this is a pretty good one. To do this straight off the bat, to come in and do this right at the top of the order is absolutely fantastic. It sets the scene. We've talked about the kinder, gentler parliament that we we'll see here. We've talked about that, and that's good talk, but what do we see? Judge Labor not by what they say but by what they do. This is a government that flip-flops straight off the bat and walks away from its commitments. That is what this government is setting the scene for. It's a fantastic standard.

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