Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Of course there are people in Gladstone and Rockhampton who earn more than $180,000, but you know as well as I do, Senator Canavan, that they are not in the majority. They are a tiny minority of people, and the majority of people who earn that kind of money are sitting in inner-city Brisbane, inner-city Sydney and inner-city Melbourne. They're not in Rockhampton; they're not in Gladstone. And here you are again supporting your Liberal overlords to do the very things that benefit their constituents and not your own.

I'll spend my remaining time talking about the dodgy deals which apparently have been made overnight, particularly with Centre Alliance. Of course we still don't know what the nature of those deals are. Senator Patrick was interviewed on Radio National this morning. He still doesn't seem to know exactly what the deals are, but he is prepared to sign up to this deal to ship all this money out of South Australia—again, they'll send it off to Melbourne, send it off to Sydney. As to the people who don't earn that kind of money in South Australia, he is prepared to sell them out—sell out his own state—for a deal even though he doesn't even know what that deal is. 'It's something about gas. Don't worry; we're going to do something about gas. Yes, I've got a nod and a wink from Senator Canavan; I've got a nod and a wink from the Prime Minister and Senator Cormann. They're going to sort it out. It's going to be good for gas prices.' But he can't even tell you what the deal is, let alone tell the Australian people or the South Australian voters who elected him what the deal is.

Apparently what this deal is going to do is bring down gas prices. I recognise that, again under this government, we've seen nothing but energy price increases, whether it be electricity or gas. I feel for people in South Australia, just as I feel for people in my home state, about the gas prices and electricity prices that they're paying. So, if there was actually some prospect that this deal would deliver, you might think about that. But I can tell Senator Patrick, and I can tell every member of the government who has signed up to this deal, that we are going to be watching what actually happens to gas prices. I saw in Senator Patrick's interview with the ABC this morning that he was pressed and pressed and pressed about what it would mean for gas prices, and he said, 'I think probably a realistic measure is something in the order of about $7 per kilojoule for gas.' Currently we're paying about $9. We want to see that decrease, and we're going to be watching. (Time expired)