Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this place, I have the enormous responsibility and great privilege of having responsibility in the consumer affairs space. Every day I get calls from mums and dads and pensioners who are being crippled by power prices. They cannot afford to pay for the heating that they desperately need and deserve in the middle of winter. In the face of wholesale prices doubling, and in the face of 20 per cent increases in power prices, what does this Prime Minister do? He has a chat. He gets the heavy hitters in for a cup of tea and says, 'Look, can you kind of just do something around the edges?' Then what does he do? He rolls out in front of a press conference and tells everyone just how strong he is. Well, we all know—to borrow a phrase from James Jeffrey—that the first rule of being in strong club is you don't say you are in strong club. This Prime Minister is no Tyler Durden, I'm telling you right now.

This Prime Minister reminds me of Getting Strong!, which parents in here will know is a great tune by the Wiggles. We have the Yellow Wiggle, the Red Wiggle, the Blue Wiggle and the Purple Wiggle. What do we have in this Prime Minister? We have a grey Wiggle. Have a look at the lyrics to Getting Strong!: 'Running on the spot getting strong.' That's all this Prime Minister, this grey Wiggle, does: run on the spot. Things are so bad under this grey Wiggle that, if I had to choose between the real Wiggles and this Prime Minister in relation to directing energy policy in this country, I'd take the Wiggles any day of the week.