Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, member for Hawke. I'd just like to get the facts right. If the member for Macnamara is going to spend four minutes talking about nuclear technology, it would be nice if he did a little bit of research and understood the technology. When we talk about this change, of getting to net zero while keeping prices down, affordability and reliability in the market, we should be able to have a mature conversation about all technology.

I note that the member for Macnamara spent just over four minutes of his five minutes talking about the opposition. That really says a lot about the government. You would have heard it from the minister, and the next ones that speak will no doubt spend a lot of time talking about our side at the moment. The reason they do that is that they don't have any answers to the problems in energy that Australians are facing. Australians at home and in businesses know their prices are going up every day. They feel it every time they get a bill. They know this government doesn't have any answers. And it's even worse than that for the Australian people. This government is playing politics with energy prices. They rushed us all back here in December because, as you'll remember Paul Erickson said, they had to look like they were addressing the cost of living. So they rushed us back for this legislation that is continuing to drive prices up. What they also did was announce the rebates with fanfare. In December, they announced the rebates that they were going to provide to you at home to make your life easier.

The political reality is they could have delivered that cost-of-living relief to you at home, the Australian people, in February when we came back. They have the numbers in the House. They have a very enjoyable Senate. It would have passed. They could have delivered that relief to Australians in February, and yet no Australian, as we stand here today, has received that cost-of-living relief. When you are struggling to put food on the table and you are making decisions between whether you can drive your kids to the sporting club or whether you have to make them miss training because you can't afford the petrol price, every day, every week and every month makes a difference.

Let's be really clear to the Australian people on why that cost-of-living relief was not delivered in February. The reason is politics. It was so the Treasurer of this country could stand at the dispatch box in May for this budget and make it to the centrepiece of his announcement. It was so he could tell everyone at home how lucky they were that they were getting $400 or $500 back from this government and how lucky and grateful they should be. It's politics. Struggling families at home have been waiting six months. This Treasurer, who has spent decades working in this House, has never put his life on the line to start a small business. He's had the comfort of a taxpayer salary for almost two decades. He played politics with cost-of-living pressures so he could make an announcement. Minister after minister and backbenchers on the government side can stand up and crow about saving $400 for small businesses while a business like Laurie, a man who risked it all to start a business, is having a $200,000-a-year increase and he is supposed to be happy about a $400 reduction that he hasn't received yet because this Treasurer and this Prime Minister are playing politics with the Australian people.

That's why we are hearing those on the government side talk about the opposition while they laugh and make jokes about the cost-of-living pressures. It's because they don't understand that if you cannot bring energy prices down it drives up inflation. It drives up interest rates. It puts Australians under so much strain. This government does not have answers for the Australian people, and the Australian people know it. When they look at their bank balance and they get their energy bills, they know this is hubris. They know there is no answer from this government for the cost-of-living pressures they are living under.

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