Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Coming into this chamber for question time, it's like waking up in the year 2000, turning on Rage and listening to Shaggy and RikRok saying, 'It wasn't me.' Every excuse, every reason—that's what we get from this government in here. 'We're smashed by the RBA on the economy.' 'Home owners are being hammered with interest rates.' 'It was Putin's original invasion of Ukraine that put up energy prices.' 'We have world commodity prices coming down, causing these problems. Woe is us', says this government. All we hear is, 'It wasn't me. Look here! Look there! The last government left us in this position.' This is what we've all heard raked out today in the talking points. I'll tell you what: when you want someone at the wheel, managing the economy, you want someone that takes responsibility.

When we hear the government say, 'We've got a choice between recession or inflation,' it's because those two are the only levers they've got. They don't have any imagination. They don't have any skills. They come in and talk about things they didn't vote for. Nothing's been blocked. They get together with their buddies in that corner, the Greens, and they've got everything through one way or another. Why didn't we vote for them? It's because they haven't worked, they didn't work or they wouldn't work, and the scoreboard shows it.

If you're getting your policies through after 2½ years of government and your only two choices are recession and inflation, something is wrong. But we sit here, and we've had excuse after excuse. Everyone is to blame except the people with their hands on the controls, and that's not good enough.

Individually they go, 'Here the child care is cheaper and this is cheaper and that's cheaper.' You'd think that you'd never had it better in Australia. But when you're a government that supports the whingers over the workers and thinks feelings are more important than facts and when you think words can do what actions need to do, this is where you end up: being a one-term government, potentially. They came in with such promise. It's like my school reports: 'Ross would do better if …' This government would do better if they actually took things seriously and stopped the hubris around how great they are, how wonderful the world is and how, if we had voted for something—even though it got through—the world would be better.

I'll tell you something about helping people out, which we all want to do: it is easier to help out people when you are growing the pot that helps everyone, and the pot that helps everyone is the builders, the miners, the growers, the farmers, the helpers and the healers, not those that sit around and pontificate around getting more public employment, more and bigger unions and more and bigger service funds. We have to get to what's really going to help and get real workers on the ground doing the things they do.

Question agreed to.