Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad you called him out. The other thing was, those opposite talked about the Ukraine war, which started before the election, but suddenly it was a problem after the election with their power bill promise. They then said 'supply-side constraints'. Well, wasn't that put into the extensive modelling that was done? Apparently not. I would have thought that a lot of the supply-side constraints got better post COVID. Not only that but in the October budget, a few months later, they said, 'Actually, your energy bills are going to go up 50 or 60 per cent over the next couple of years.' It was exceptionally deceitful of this government. What is their solution to that? Their solution—this is a smart—to the problems with power prices is actually to cut one of the supplies to energy transmission—that is, gas. In the gas industry, many people are saying those opposite have stuffed up the supply of gas into the system. That was their solution. We will see how that plays out, but I will not put anything on it to lower prices.

The other thing the government said was 'cheaper mortgages'. Can you actually believe they said this? In April and early May, they were saying, 'We're going to give you cheaper mortgages.' Now their line is, 'There are a lot of things in train that you did that mean it is not going to happen.' Could they not see it then? They couldn't see any problems with delivering cheaper mortgages before the election, saying 'you're going to have cheaper mortgages' but, suddenly, after the election, there have been eight interest rates increases from eight Reserve Bank board meetings. Before that, the government were saying 'cheaper mortgages' but, no, there are all these things happening. Did they not see that when they were saying 'cheaper mortgages'? Again, it was exceptionally deceitful to the men and women and families of Australia.

You would think, 'Okay, the Treasurer would have solutions to this.' His solution was a waffly 6,000-word essay. (Time expired)

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