Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do note that the government is really struggling to defend their position on this. As we saw during question time, and as we continue to see during the motions to take note, what the government continue to do is to try and deflect the question, blame somebody else for the problem, so that they don't have to actually answer the question. That's one of the really disappointing things. I think Senator Cadell's comment was on point. It's called question time because it's about the questions; it's not about the government providing answers. They continue to deflect the question, to blame somebody else—it's not their problem—and then not answer the question. Why don't they answer the question? It is because, despite going to the previous election saying hundreds of times that they had a plan, they actually don't have a plan. They did make some promises, particularly in relation to the cost of living. They said that Australians would continue to receive pay rises ahead of the CPI. Well, how's that promise going? That promise has disappeared. We know that, with the CPI rising the way that it is, it's not sustainable and it's only going to continue to feed into the inflationary cycle. So, Labor's promise from before the election will actually hurt Australians, so they know that they can't keep that promise and they've walked away from that.

They promised Australians a $275-a-year reduction in their energy bills. That lasted a matter of only a few weeks. They've walked away from that. They told Australians that Labor would be with Australians all the way. That's what they told them before the election when they were seeking their vote to get elected. What is patently clear is that Australians are on their own under this Labor government.

When it came to providing support for cost of living through the reduction in fuel tax, we provided that, at the peak of the price of fuel. It was Labor's decision as to whether they continued that, as it would been ours had we won the election; we didn't. But it would have been a decision that we had to make. It is now a decision for the Labor Party. So, trying to deflect, trying to blame somebody else is, quite frankly, cowardly; it's weak; it's gutless. And Labor need to be prepared to take responsibility for it.

We know the history of Labor's management of the finances. We saw what happened when they were in government last time, and we still remember what happened when they were in government the time before. It took the coalition six years to get Labor's mess under control after we last came to government, in 2013. Once we'd done that, after six years, we had the budget back in balance. And then the pandemic started. But we remember that when we put JobKeeper in place we saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, kept hundreds of thousands of workers connected to their businesses and kept the economy strong during the pandemic, Yet the Labor Party were barracking and calling for us to spend more money. They wanted us to spend $300 per Australian—$6 billion—to encourage people to get vaccinated, when they were already rolling up in their droves to do that.

So, how much worse would Australia's financial position be if we had listened to the Labor Party and the things that they were calling us to do when we were in government and which we resisted? We responsibly wound back the income support that kept the economy going, that Australians supported during COVID. We have one of the most successful vaccination rates of any country in the world. And we came out of COVID with a strong economy. The government is now benefiting from the strength of the economy in the budget numbers. It's interesting, though, that the independent Parliamentary Budget Office confirmed that Labor's policies would result in higher debt and deficits than the plan put forward by the coalition at the last election. So, they can't come in here and try to deflect—not answer the question and blame somebody else. They are responsible for their financial position and they should have the courage to stand up and take that responsibility.