Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

We're here today because, at the last election, on 97 occasions, the Prime Minister looked the Australian public in the eye and said that he would reduce power prices by $275. There was no asterisk. There was no fine print. There was no qualification. It was a clear and fundamental commitment and promise made to the Australian public.

Mr Speaker, it wasn't made just as a throwaway comment or on a whim; it was made deliberately to mislead the Australian people. That's the reality. The problem is that the Prime Minister, since the election, has not mentioned that figure on one occasion—not on one occasion. Australians who voted for this Prime Minister at the last election did so believing that he was going to honour his word. They did so because they knew the pressures that existed in their own household budgets. They knew the pressure on all of the elements to their small business budget. They thought that they could believe and trust this Prime Minister.

As it turns out, the government now have had six months since the election in May to outline their plan, in the budget in October and in the six weeks since the budget. There is no plan. Let's be very clear about it: the government have no plan. There is no plan that has been worked on over the course of the period since they won the election. And they need to be honest with the Australian people. They've thrown around this figure of $230, a new figure that they've created. They've walked away from that within only a matter of days, because the modelling hasn't been done. As it turns out, what they're actually promising, what they're saying to you—and this is quite cute, when you analyse what the government are proposing here—is that your bills will go up but not by quite as much. So there's no promise that bills will go down by $275 or, indeed, by $230. The government predicted in their October budget that your electricity prices would go up by 56 per cent and your gas prices would go up by 44 per cent. As it turns out, they're going to deliver that and more.

And it's not as a result of what's happened, tragically, in Ukraine. The Prime Minister made the promise to reduce power prices by $275 on 27 occasions after Russia went into Ukraine. The opposition at the time, the now government, were fully aware of the prevailing conditions. They can't say they were blindsided by the war in Ukraine and the broader turmoil in Europe. They can't say that they weren't aware of the predictions around energy and economic policy in broader Europe, North America and Asia. The Prime Minister knew exactly what he was saying but he had no intention of delivering on it. What he was after was your vote. What happened was that he got your vote and now he has left you and your family behind. That, Mr Speaker, is something that people can reconcile and they can deal with over the course of the next 2½ years.

But what's happening now is that the government have flown every kite over the course of the last couple of weeks. They've spoken about increasing taxes, a super profits tax, weighing into the markets and imposing other draconian measures. They quickly cobbled this together because they had a deadline of last Friday, when the premiers and chief ministers were coming together. They had to thrust something before the chief ministers and premiers. They were essentially putting this plane together on the runway. There was no forethought and consideration that could give us any faith in the model they were proposing.

The Prime Minister said, as has been pointed out in this debate already, that he wanted a new approach to this parliament. In fact, he was very clear in his own language on 25 March this year, when he said:

In terms of legislation that comes before the Parliament, quite often, it's just aimed at dividing people and being tricky. And I call it 'wedgislation' rather than putting the national interest first … I want proper processes. I want to consult people.

Well, we received, and the crossbenchers received, the bill that's before the House today at 8.45 last night, 12 hours before this debate. They still can't tell us who will be targeted in the $1.5 billion package. They can't tell us the definition of small business. They can't tell us whether the money will be inflationary, so that people will end up paying more in their interest rates as a result of putting this money into the economy. They can't provide any modelling, because the modelling hasn't yet been done. How does the Prime Minister reconcile his statement on 25 March and his conduct this very day in the parliament?

The fact is that it can't be reconciled, and the Australian public understand that the reckless approach of this Prime Minister is at odds with his statements and the commitments that he made to the Australian public only this year. He should be marked down for it.

I have been in this parliament for a few years. It's obvious I wasn't here during the Whitlam period in the 1970s. I was only born in 1970. I might look much older, but I wasn't here during the Whitlam period. But I have read a lot about the Whitlam period—the uncertainty, the dysfunction, the difficult approach to legislation, the lack of consultation and the intervention in markets—and we know how that ended. But I was here during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. That is seared in my memory, and it is seared in the memory of many Australians. I can tell you that what we're seeing play out here smacks of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years of dysfunction.

It was difficult to take the title of the worst minister during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. This was a contested space. I have to say that this was a contested space. It was a contested space because there was a great deal of dysfunction not just from Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, not just from the then Deputy Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, but from many ministers. None were worse, Mr Speaker, than this man over here, the member for McMahon, the shadow energy minister. He presided over Fuel Watch and Grocery Watch. He was the shadow Assistant Treasurer. Mr Speaker, he is taking this government and our country down a dead end. Mr Speaker, that's the—

See this speech in context