Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, Senator McGrath—lower power bills were one of those promises. You are right; there was a promise of $275 of cuts to power bills. That was one of the promises, and it was made more than 90 times, as Senator McGrath rightly points out.

Of course, we were also promised greater transparency. We were promised greater accountability. We were promised a new way of doing business. That's what we were told would come from those opposite. Instead, we've got the hypocrisy of a Labor-Greens alliance who simply want to ram legislation through this place without enabling any consideration of it. What we don't know, what is not transparent—and the challenge I lay down to the Labor Party and the Greens to be honest about—is what else was discussed in putting this guillotine in place.

Honourable senators interjecting—