Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

All Australians should be asking themselves these questions to really test the government and to make sure that the promises that were made before the last election have been fulfilled: Am I better off today than I was before the last election? Am I in a better position now than I was before the last election? Have my power prices gone down? Has my mortgage lowered? Can I afford rent, groceries and petrol? Can I afford insurance? Do I feel safer?

The reality is that the answer to all of these questions is no. Your power prices have skyrocketed. The promise of $275 this year and every other year was a lie. Your mortgages have gone up. We've seen criminals released into the street.

Petrol prices are at record highs and people can't afford to get insurance. The No. 1 role of a government is to keep you safe. The second is to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. This has not occurred under the Albanese Labor government, because their first point of business was to call a referendum—to spend $400 million and go to the polls. Instead of tackling the crippling cost-of-living crisis, they decided to bring a divisive referendum to the people, even though they were told it would fail.

We've seen people's lives made worse, not better. My office in Townsville, in a regional part of Australia, is feeling the pinch of the lack of action and lack of policies that have been brought forward by this Labor government. If it's bad policy that hurts the cities, times it by 20 and that's what it feels like in the regions. The cost-of-living crisis that we face is something that every single person in Townsville is feeling right now.

Then, during the debacle of this term of government, we saw the Australian Defence Force be let down time and time again. We saw sonar used on divers, where they were injured, and the Prime Minister was too weak to call out the bad behaviour and raise it with Xi Jinping. We saw flares fired at an Australian military helicopter, risking the lives of those on board, and, once again, no minister nor the Prime Minister stood up for our people. Now we have the misinformation bill, which will allow a single minister to be an arbiter of the truth. We stand against this and we'll fight for you.

See this speech in context