Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. Unlike some of my colleagues here, I will withdraw unequivocally. But I will say that we come in here with a government who hides behind a litany of broken promises, untruths told to the Australian people during the campaign, and come in here unable either to answer a question or, when they do utter a sentence in any form or format, it is constantly heavy on politics, heavy on excuses and very short on a plan. I might point out to those opposite that for Australians who are about to come off their fixed mortgage rates, who are about to require $12,000 to $20,000 a year, depending on the size of their mortgage, when they're looking to this federal government to provide them with some guidance, a plan, cost of living support, all they are hearing from you is petty political point-scoring that is actually based on falsehoods. No-one opposite remembers the pandemic. No-one opposite remembers that our economy came out of the pandemic 3.4 per cent bigger than it was going into it; that the cash rate was 0.35 per cent; that we had lower unemployment coming out of the pandemic than we had going into it; that we had strong GDP growth and in fact we were one of the few economies that maintained an AAA credit rating.

So perhaps a history lesson is required, and not even a particularly lengthy history lesson, because it wasn't that long ago. It wasn't until you lot took the helm that the wheels completely and utterly fell off. But instead of putting together a plan, instead of doing some work, there has been a constant cry that 'Government is hard and boo-hoo, we didn't get it right.' The fact that we heard from the finance minister prior to the October budget—for those listening or any of those in the chamber, this government actually has had a budget—so when they talk about budget and issues in the budget, this is their budget that contains the issues, because they have had a budget. It wasn't an economic forecast; it wasn't a statement; it was a budget with lots of budget papers. We all got them delivered to our offices and we went through them, and then we had lots of budget estimates in a follow-up to Labor's budget. But we did hear from the finance minister time and time again—I'm not sure if it was 97 times; we might have to go back and check. During the election we heard 97 times that power prices were going to go down by $275, but we now know that wasn't true and that's not going to happen, to the point that when Senator Farrell was asked 'Can you just say the number 275', he declined. It's not that hard, people.

We don't know if the finance minister said it 97 times, but she said an awful lot that she was going through the budget with the treasurer line by line. What does that mean? Does that mean she opened it up and flicked through and had a quick skim? We were told time and again that line by line this was going to be gone through. Is it incompetence? Is it inability to look into detail and understand what's written in the budget papers? How is it now that we have those opposite coming in and talking about mistakes they made in their own budget—mistakes they made when they, the ones in charge on the Treasury benches, could not go through a budget, didn't know how to look at programs, didn't know funding through to the forward estimates? This whole line that you're all wheeling out about fiscal cliffs—we know that none of you sat through economics 1.01 for may be more than half a lecture before it all got too hard, because that is the level of economic comprehension that's demonstrated day by day by those opposite.

Terminating measures are a common tool used in a budget by responsible governments. It's just the way they work. I'm sure we will see in the May budget that those opposite may actually be employing similar methods, but, when they do it, it'll be completely different because it's just the way the budget needs to be reported. It's the way budgets are done, and you have had your budget. Your budget was in October. You missed it. You goofed it. You got it wrong. You're not up to it. You can't get across the detail. Do you know who's paying for this? The Australian people. You're not giving them a plan. You're giving them excuses and petty politics, which we saw from your frontbench today.