Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A headline this week in the Australian newspaper: 'Voters abandon Anthony Albanese as Labor's fortunes nosedive.' You sit and wonder: how did it all go so terribly wrong? Let me have a small ponder. On 200 occasions before the election, they promised a $275 reduction in electricity prices. That wasn't that hard to deliver, but most people are paying in excess of 20 per cent more for their power. They were told that under Labor that life was going to be better, but in fact they've received 12 interest rate rises consecutively. The average mortgage holder is paying in excess of thousands of dollars more. There was a $450 million referendum, which every jurisdiction, bar the Australian Capital Territory, comprehensively rejected. And it takes a special level of incompetence for a government to take nearly 200 days to deliver a 90-day infrastructure review. If it's not on the economic front that Labor are struggling, maybe it could be the release of hardcore criminals out onto the streets, as we speak, going into the Christmas break. Maybe that has had something to do with their nosediving fortunes. The only thing they seem to have successfully done is to fill the boardroom tables with their Labor mates.