James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Wong is laughing, but the Labor Party have got radical and extreme industrial relation policies that are so anti small business. I stand here as a senator for Queensland and a strong and proud proponent of small businesses across all of Queensland. When I left home about a week ago, I was chatting to—I probably won't name them, because I don't want the Labor Party and the unions picking on them—some of the people I buy stuff from in Warwick, and they are terrified about the radical and extreme industrial relations policies that are going to come down. They don't want to get caught up in this vortex of the Labor Party paying back their union paymasters. That's what we're seeing with these radical and extreme industrial relations policies. So not only do the poor, poor Australian people have Mr Albanese as Prime Minister—heaven help all of us!—but they've got a 56 per cent rise in power bills and they've got radical industrial relations policies.

When you look into what the government is doing or not doing in relation to gas, you should be very scared. In its recent budget, the government not only reduced support for gas exploration and ensuring that we have reliable energy across Australia but gave $10 million to the Environmental Defenders Office—$10 million to the radical, extreme Environmental Defenders Office. Effectively, the Labor Party are funding extreme left-wing greenies to stop the progress of commerce, business and resource development in Australia. So, if you're wondering in about a year's time or two years time why your power bills have gone up so much, it is because of the policies of the Labor Party—the policies that the ministers today could not answer questions on in relation to what is going to happen, whether it's to your power bills or how much your pay may go up. We all want Australians' pay to go up, but the minister was asked a direct question today about how much people's pay will go up under the Labor Party, and all we got was a bunch of waffle. It was a lot of waffle. And it was not like the waffle that you can get and eat when it comes out of a jaffle iron; it was the waffle that just causes you to lose the will to live when listening to those answers. It is very, very sad that the Australian people will have higher power bills and actually will not get the pay rises they deserve because of the policy inaction of the Labor Party.