Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In a world where water and power prices continue to rise, and we have a Labor Party doing very little about it, we now have in Queensland water prices being determined by a state Labor government that expropriated the water from the dams and infrastructure from my very city and now has the temerity to increase the prices. They asked the QCA to do the review, and the 11 local council areas simply have to suck up a three per cent increase every year for the next three years. That is almost $100 tacked onto your water bill. There is a word in the vernacular for a politician on a six-figure salary who waves by those kinds of injustices. We call them muppets. We've had enough of muppets in Queensland, we've had enough of poodles in Queensland. We want MPs who stand up against double-digit inflation on water prices for no reason at all. No sooner have we dragged these Seqwater people out of the courts for their mismanagement of the Wivenhoe Dam issue that flooded my beautiful city than we have them asking for double digit price rises for the next three years. It is unacceptable but you would expect it from Labor—47 of those state MPs queued up like muppets to vote through the pay rise for Seqwater and the increase in water prices, and there was nothing the LNP could do to stop it. Well, we will stop it. It will take an election to stop it. Mark my words, Labor: if you fiddle with water prices you'll feel it at the ballot-box, and that is only months away.