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

Thank you, Senator Cash—'they broke a promise.' This is where I lower my voice, which I know people like, and I get very serious—it's like telling a bedtime story—and the reason why is because the Labor Party are embarrassed. They are embarrassed because they know that they misled the Australian people at the last election. The Labor Party misled them about so many issues, but the clunker, the massive one, is to do with the cost of living and the cost of your power bills. When they come in here and they've been asked questions by I think nearly everybody on the front bench, the middle bench and the backbench—all the benches on this side of the chamber; we've all asked questions to the Labor ministers—about the 275 figure, none of them say anything.

It's really fascinating actually. It's an exercise in human nature, that when we ask a question about the power bills the relevant minister gets up and starts fumbling away, like Inspector Clouseau on steroids, and what you see is that the Labor backbenchers immediately pick up their phones and become really interested in watching cat videos and things like that. It is fascinating. All the heads go down, like this, like they're doing a giant prayer towards all of us, which is brilliant, like we're minor deities. But we are compared to these people when it comes to keeping our election promises. We keep our election promises because we're on the side of the Australian people, whereas the Labor Party are only on the side of themselves. The Labor Party are only on the side of themselves, making sure that they scutter around the blue carpet like Dyson vacuum cleaners being very excited around this building, but where are they when it comes your wages? Where are they when it comes to standing up on your side?

They're not. They have forgotten about Australian families and Australian workers and shame on them. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.