Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

In AHistory of Delusions, author Victoria Shepherd takes readers back hundreds of years to investigate extraordinary and well documented cases of delusion. But she doesn't need to look back over hundreds of years of history; she only needs to look at those opposite, because to think that the past 10 months has been anything but chaotic is, quite frankly, delusional.

In this interesting book, and as the Washington Post's Lucinda Robb in her wonderful review writes:

It is quite a cast of characters. There is the clockmaker who thought his head had been chopped off and accidentally swapped for another (he wanted his original—and much better—teeth back). A London tea-broker interrupted Parliament to warn that a gang of villains was using a device called an "Air-Loom" to control the minds of British politicians—

Maybe there's somebody out there who's doing that to those who are writing the talking points for those opposite! The review continues:

A middle-aged housewife, immortalized in medical history as Madame M, showed up at a Parisian police station to report that her entire family had been replaced by doubles—

That could have happened to those opposite too!

Indeed, although the Prime Minister says it has been a pretty good 10 months, he didn't actually say it's been an outstanding 10 months, because he knows it hasn't. In his heart of hearts, he knows that it hasn't. Certainly it hasn't. If he and those opposite believe otherwise, they belong in the next chapter of history's most famous people who are delusional. It certainly hasn't been a pretty good 10 months for farmers, who, thanks to the Minister for the Environment and Water, are now faced with buybacks in the river communities. They are not saying that it's been a pretty good 10 months.

It certainly hasn't been a pretty good 10 months for businesses and families, because every time they turn on a power switch, they're paying more on their power bills. Indeed, we heard on 97 occasions that there was going to be a $275 cut to those bills. Where is that cut? Of course, it's delusional. It is delusional of those opposite, but they won't even mention the $275. Oh, no, you don't hear them mention that figure anymore, because it has been wiped from their talking points. It was in their talking points.

I hear the member for Hunter. It was in his talking points when he was running for that seat, but it's not there now. You won't hear them say $275, because they know they duped the Australian public.

Indeed, it hasn't been a good 10 months for those communities which had the cashless debit card. I know the member for Page mentioned this, but the cashless debit card had led to better communities. It had led to better outcomes. Certainly, the Aboriginal people who live in those remote communities were getting better outcomes from the cashless debit card, and that has been taken away. That is indeed so sad.

It hasn't been a 'pretty good 10 months' for truckies. I acknowledge the frontline medical professionals—the nurses and the doctors—and everyone else who played a part in saving lives during COVID, but it was the truckies who transported the vaccines and the personal protection equipment around the country and who did so much to keep the toilet rolls supplied when everybody thought they needed 10 toilet rolls every time they went to the loo. They were the real unsung heroes of the global pandemic right here in Australia. I was the minister who put the national transport freight logistics code in place—in hours, not weeks, months or whatever the case might be—with the state ministers, albeit some were Labor, and I thank them again. That's what the truckies did, and what are they getting in return? A 10 per cent rise in a truckie tax that they don't want, they don't need, they don't deserve and they certainly didn't expect. 'It's been a pretty good 10 months,' the Prime Minister says—not at all! It hasn't been a good 10 months, not for families, not for business, not for farmers, not for truckies and not for remote Aboriginal communities.

If this is what Labor is going to do in the first 10 months of government, then goodness knows what's going to come in the future. But Australians are onto this government; they know that they have been duped. They won't be duped again. They won't be duped twice. They won't be misled twice when they hear Labor candidates saying, 'We're going to cut your power bills,' because we know that under Labor you always pay more.

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