Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I love the enthusiasm shown by the member for Lingiari, because her engagement on this issue would actually suggest to me that, having recently seen the successful election of the CLP in the Northern Territory, where the Labor government utterly failed on a number of fronts, she knows exactly what I mean about how the Labor Party will run the next federal campaign. It will all fit on either a postage stamp or the back of a coaster, but, more likely, it will fit on a corflute. This Labor government thinks it can create some kind of distraction, and the Prime Minister thought he could distract Australians away from their troubles. But now it's grown into something else. As I said, the member for Richmond is talking about how great the tower coverage is, and that gives them a reason to talk about it. That's fantastic. But it's a distraction from the issues that are important to Australians. The government think that by creating a shiny bauble over here about the public ownership of the NBN, when they're having an entire Seinfeld episode of their own about whether it can or can't be sold or will or won't be sold, Australians are not going to focus on the government's failures when they're casting their ballot at the next election. Unfortunately for this Labor government, it severely underestimates what Australians know is going on in their household budgets.

This NBN sham of a bill is actually the last thing that Australians are thinking about right now. They want relief from their hip pocket; they want relief from cost-of-living pressures. They want to see their mortgage payments going down. None of those things are done by a government who is too busy chasing the corflute headline.

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