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

No, of course we won't, Member for Mallee. Will we see anything happen in the infrastructure space? We'll see plenty of reviews. We'll see plenty of plans. We'll see plenty of ribbon-cutting for projects that were funded by the previous coalition government. But will we see a positive action plan of rollout, of delivery, by this Labor government? The answer to that is a resounding no. Members on the coalition side understand it, they know it, and they're worried about it.

Moreover, our constituents are very concerned. When the member for Ballarat, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, put in place her 90-day review, we knew that this was just procrastination. We knew it was just Labor being Labor. Don't believe what Labor says it's going to do; believe what Labor does. It's never the same two things, as the member for Forde just said to me a few moments ago before I rose to speak on this bill.

It is an important bill. Whilst the opposition is opposing this bill, it is important that we do talk about manufacturing and things being made in Australia, because it highlights again the sad reality that power prices, energy costs, are going through the roof for industry, for farmers, for households, for Australians. When we have a prime minister who promised on no fewer than 97 occasions before the May 2022 election that there was going to be a power price reduction of $275 reduction off your bill, that hoodwinked many Australians. They're not fooled now. They know, as all Australians do. All Australians who live in the real world know that life is so much more expensive now than it was before Labor came to office. Labor has pushed prices up across the board.

I heard the member for McEwen also talking about housing and how difficult it was for Labor to build houses, but we've got a Labor government which is acceding to the requests of its state governments. In Victoria we've got an administration which is banning conventional gas onshore and offshore. We have the Jacinta Allan government, following on from the Daniel Andrews administration, which won't allow the timber industry. What do you build houses out of? What do you power houses with? It's so difficult to build a house anywhere in Australia, let alone in Victoria. The reshuffle is not going to fix anything. It's not going to put roofs over people's heads. It's not going to bring power prices down. Whilst ever you've got a government that is pushing this manic renewables drive over sensible, practical, available baseload power, you are going to have—

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