Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the economic catastrophe that's unfolding here in Australia. Just in reply to Senator Polley's comments: if she thinks the Australian people are going to forget the pain that Prime Minister Albanese has inflicted upon the Australian people because of the unnecessary immigration rate of over half a million people a year, she is kidding herself. You are driving hardworking Australians into poverty. You should be ashamed of yourself. The Australian Labor Party is kicking the worker in the guts, and that is not good enough. I'd like to describe it as a clown show. Watching the Prime Minister carry on reminds me of Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun. There's that famous meme where everything's exploding in the background. In this case, there's the Prime Minister going: 'Nothing to see here. We'll give you a little bit of an electricity rebate. But here's the thing: it's coming out of your other pocket through higher taxes. We're going to give you a little bit of a subsidy here. But guess what: it comes out of your other pocket in the form of higher taxes.'

Of course, that is the game that Labor play. They play a game of charades. They're constantly moving the cups around on the table, but there's nothing inside them. They have nothing but hot air. What the Labor Party are doing is really more like the Colosseum. Anthony Albanese, like an old Roman emperor, is putting his thumb down, and, as the Christians were thrown to the lions, Australian working families are being thrown on the mercy of international markets, because the Labor Party will not protect its people. 'Protect' is a word I like to use, and I use it on this side of the Senate. I call myself a protectionist. The Liberal Party were the original party of that, before the free traders came in, and I like to remind my own party of that from time to time. We are here to protect the working-class people.

I note Senator Birmingham is having a bit of a chuckle, but go and read Robert Menzies' 'Forgotten People' speech. In the last paragraph he says that we should not go back to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. There are only two types of outcomes in a market in this world: you're either making money or you're losing money. Our role as representatives of the Australian people is to make sure that Australian people can put bread on the table. They have to make a living. That is why we will stand here today and we will push back against higher energy prices, higher interest rates and higher rents. The Labor Party love to go, 'We're entirely independent from the RBA; there's nothing we can do about it.' I call that out to be complete misinformation. At the end of the day, there is something you can do about it, and that is lower immigration.

We had immigration after World War II and we had immigration after World War I. We've always had immigration. But the difference this time is that half the population coming in are going to university and wasting time on getting a degree instead of getting out there and doing things like after World War I, when they built Lake Eildon and Lake Hume, or after World War II, when they built the Snowy Hydro. They are not doing that. We are not building infrastructure. We are not building infrastructure, and that is the problem with the Labor Party of today.

They have abandoned the working class, and we can see that because, for the first 18 months of their government, all ever did was talk about the Voice. That wasn't going to make a difference to any Aboriginals out there in the regional communities and it wasn't going to make a difference to hardworking Australians. And, believe you me, hardworking Australians voted unanimously to push back against the ideological virtue-signalling. What they want are real solutions and real outcomes in this country, and the Labor Party do not have any solutions.

Last week we saw the Prime Minister jetting off to Tuvalu—a country whose coral reefs are growing. So much for climate change! I should note that last week, as well, the news came out that the Great Barrier Reef in my home state is also growing, to record highs. What Prime Minister Albanese is doing is issuing visas to and bringing in the people of Tuvalu on an unrestricted basis, and just adding to the problem that we have here in Australia. We are not solving the cost-of-living problem.