Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

As if middle Australia wasn't already doing it tough enough—higher prices, higher taxes and higher mortgages—it's just about to get tougher yet. Much of the pain felt by middle Australia—these are everyday, hardworking Australians—is a direct consequence of the failed policy experiments of the Albanese Labor government. Over the last 12 months the country has been changing, and so too has the way of life for everyday Australians as they come to appreciate the impact of a Labor government.

This transition from a coalition government to a Labor government has reinforced differences between Australia's two great governing parties. For the coalition, we believe in small government. We believe in freedom of the individual. We believe in the importance of family. We believe in empowering local communities, and we believe in small business, free enterprise and entrepreneurship. When these values underpin the government of Australia, middle Australia wins. People's lives improve, family budgets get easier to manage and younger generations have more opportunities to get ahead, to buy a home and to make ends meet. But when the Labor Party is in power, as it is now, all this goes out the window, because what the Labor Party believes in is big government. Individuals, the family, the local community, businesses, enterprise, entrepreneurs—all out the window because all that matters to Labor is big government. This is especially the case when it comes to the energy system, where Labor believes not only in big government but also in big promises.

Despite the coalition reducing power prices under its watch—in fact, in the last term of government alone, power prices went down by eight per cent for households, 10 per cent for businesses and 12 per cent for industries. But still the Labor Party went to the last federal election promising the Australian people they could get these power prices down even further than that. They made a promise, and they made that promise no less than 97 times before the election. They were so confident about it that even after the invasion of Ukraine they kept it going. If you go to the Australian Labor Party's website today, sure enough, that big promise is still there. The question I know you are asking yourself, Deputy Speaker Claydon, is: what was that promise? I'll give you a hint. The promise was about household power bills. Labor promised to reduce household power bills by—guess how many dollars? Have a guess. $275. That's right, Labor promised to reduce average household power bills by $275.

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