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

Ninety-seven times, Senator Cadell, they promised they would cut power bills by $275. It was one of those core promises of the Labor Party. They were going to cut power bills by $275. Ninety-seven times they said that. Yet we find in the budget papers—it was in very small font; I think it was font size eight or nine—that actually power prices under the Labor Party are going to go up by 56 per cent. That's not 15.6 per cent or 5.6 per cent or 0.56 per cent; that is 56 per cent. We have in power a Labor Party that promised to cut power bills by $275. Instead, through Labor's policy inaction and through the decisions they are making—so it's an axis where any decisions they do make are going to be the wrong decisions and the decisions they don't make are also going to be the wrong decisions—we're going to end up with power bills going up by 56 per cent. Indeed, the average Australian family are going to be $2,000 worse off by Christmas because of the policies of the Labor Party.

Labor are always going to cost you more. They're going to cost you more in your power bills. They're going to cost you more in your interest rates. They're going to cost you more when your rent goes up. They're going to cost you more when unemployment goes up—it is going up at the moment under the policies of the Labor Party. What we're seeing with the Labor Party and their radical and extreme industrial relations policies—