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

I move:

That the Senate take note of all answers to all questions asked by coalition senators.

What we've experienced this afternoon is one of those out-of-body experiences where you get to look at and take a helicopter view of what this government is about. It was summed up in question time when you had this caricature of backflips and flip-flops and dillydallying, sprinkled with this unhealthy sugar dust of incompetence. It was summed up in question time because of the arrogance of this government, who tell the Australian people that they've never had it so good. It's the Marie Antoinette approach to executive government of let them eat cake, because they've never had it so good.

We heard minister after minister get up and respond to questions that were put by coalition senators about cost of living, the riots in Alice Springs last night and the failure of the Prime Minister to lead a mature government. What did we get from this Labor Party? We got arrogance. We had the arrogance of a government who have been in power for almost two years and have started to believe their own press releases written by their own media and press advisers, because they've started to think that what they are doing is quite good. Guess what? It isn't.

Any politician who leaves Canberra and spends some time on the road—as coalition senators do day after day, going around their states listening to and living with their constituents—knows that the number one issue impacting upon Australians today is cost of living. Cost of living are the three words that this Labor Party government did not mention at all last year. Cost of living did not come into the lexicon of the modern Labor Party until the Voice referendum happened. When that got rejected, suddenly some focus groups were conducted by the Labor Party and they discovered cost of living was the number one issue in Queensland and in Australia. I can tell you, as someone who was on pre-poll for days on days and was in Brisbane on polling day and for the by-elections, the number one issue in Queensland is cost of living. The message that was sent to the Labor Party on cost of living was a pretty strong one. In Ipswich, the seat of Ipswich West fell to the Liberal-National Party. There was a 22 per cent swing in the very, very, very safe seat of Inala, a fiefdom of the Labor Party that was almost taken by our brilliant LNP candidate running there.

What's happened is that Queenslanders and Australians are turning on the Labor Party. They're turning on the left wing because they know that this Labor Party made a lot of promises before the last election. Remember that they were going to cut your power bills by $275, a promise that was made by the Prime Minister 97 times? Put your hands up, Australia, put your hands up, Queensland, if your power bill has gone down by $275. No-one has put their hand up. Not even the Labor Party benches put their hand up, because power bills have gone up. So for those who are listening at home, your power bills have not gone down by $275; they've gone up by 10, 15, 20 per cent.

Queenslanders and Australians are living and experiencing a cost of living crisis at the moment, and what we have from Labor Party? We have platitudes, we have the arrogance of this executive, this executive of the Labor Party government who fail to understand or appreciate how tough it is in Queensland at the moment. Queenslanders have to deal with a state level government and a federal Labor government. Think about the people living in Townsville who have got a crime crisis, a health crisis, a cost-of-living crisis; but guess what? The people living in Townsville are not by themselves, because those crises are in Cairns, Cunnamulla, in Warwick where I live. They're in the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast and in Brisbane. Queenslanders are being let down by the Labor Party. Australians are being let down by the Labor Party. Because we have a Labor Party who are just not up to the job of government. We've seen the flip-flops. We know where the Labor Party cabinet meets: it meets in the flip-flop section of Kmart, because they're all choosing which flip-flops they're going to wear: the pink ones, the blue ones, the ones with little spikes on them. This is a government of flip-flops, backflips and dilly-dallying. They are a government who are not up to the job of governing. I say, why don't you call an election? Let's have an election now. Let's get on with it and have a vote on whether you understand the cost of living crisis that is hurting Australia at the moment.