Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Let's be honest, it's not going well for the government; it's really not. And people like me and the member for Gippsland and the member for Morton—we've been around for a while. We know the talking points that you get, and we know that deep down in your gut you have to go out and say things that are blatantly untrue and a load of rubbish. But you've got to go through the discipline of it. I feel for the Labor Party now. They're all handed their talking points and they trot out that power prices are going down, that the government has never been better and that the cost of living is all fixed up.

If you talk to anyone on the street, they give you this 100-yard stare. You know you're cactus. We've all been there, and I feel the government is there at the moment. Why? You're never going to control the cost of living while you've got some of the dearest power in the world. It's not possible. You can't do it. And you're never going to bring down the price of power while you have this unhinged cult-like attachment to intermittents. You need this epiphany: what you are saying in here and what's happening out there are two entirely different universes. You go to shops, and they say: 'Mate, my gas bill is going through the roof. I can't pay for this anymore.' Pensioners say, 'I can't afford my power bill.' And then you say to them, 'We're going to fix it with wind towers and solar panels,' and they just look at you like you are discombobulated and detached from reality.

The poor old Labor Party jumped fair off the cliff with the Voice, and they hit the deck in amongst the rocks. They dusted themselves off, shook their heads and climbed back up the cliff, and now they're going to jump off it again for intermittent power. It's just not working. They're tragically honourable but politically idiotic. And the price will be paid at the ballot box. In our area, in New England, they took away the Tenterfield bypass and gave us swindle factories and wind towers everywhere. They took away Dungowan dam and gave us solar panels, fields of photovoltaic black. They took away the Inland Rail and gave us highly flammable batteries that sit beside towns. They took away our property rights and gave us the highest cost of living that we've experienced. They gave us transmission lines with your environmental law. They go out to regional areas such as St George and say, 'We assuage our virtue by taking away your property rights.' It ain't going to help you at the election.

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