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

One of the great traditions of politics in Australia is the scare campaign being run by the Labor Party. We witnessed that today in question time in response to the questions put by the coalition to Labor ministers. The scare campaign that we can see coming down through social media channels, free-to-air or, if you're old-fashioned, a newspaper is a $315 billion scare campaign that this so-called Labor government are going to run at the next election. They can't run on their record, because the record of the Labor Party in power shows a Labor Party who have failed to understand how the modern Australian economy works, how modern Australian businesses work and, indeed, how Australian workers work.

We have the worst of the worst in this Labor Party—a party that is so focused on its own future it forgets about how normal Australians are living their lives. When the Labor Party are in power, they are focused on the bubble that is Canberra. It's only the Labor Party who would promise to employ an extra 24,000 public servants at a cost of $36 billion—public servants who will be employed in Canberra—as a solution to Australia's economic concerns at the moment.

When you leave Canberra and you go to my home state of Queensland, I'll tell you what people are saying. They are not marching in the streets of Hughenden, Townsville or Cairns saying: 'What do we want? We want more public servants, and we want them now!' What they're saying is that they want a government that understands that the No. 1 issue impacting Australians is cost of living. But we've got a Labor Party government that has spent the last two years failing to address that issue. We've got a Labor Party that hadn't talked about the cost of living until a focus group that was being run by the general secretary of the Labor Party told them that cost of living is the No. 1 issue. Remember that this is the Labor Party who spent half a billion dollars on the divisive Voice referendum, rather than dealing with the cost-of-living issue.

When you look at the figures under Labor, gas is up 33 per cent and electricity is up 14 per cent, and that's even after the taxpayer subsidies that the federal Labor Party and, in Queensland, the failing and flailing state Labor government have sent out. Rents are up 16 per cent, health costs are up 11 per cent, education costs are up 11 per cent, food costs are up 12 per cent, and finance and insurance costs are up 17 per cent. That's a lot of statistics there, but what that says is that people outside of Canberra are doing it tough. But, when you listen to the Labor Party, they're like the Marie Antoinette of modern government—'Let them eat cake'—or Harold Macmillan—'You've never had it so good.' They are tone deaf to what is happening in Australia at the moment.

There's a reason why the Labor Party's polls are so low. They're lucky to have a 3 in front of their polling number, because the mob out there are angry. They're angry that they work hard. They're angry that their real wages have not gone up under this government. They're angry that the cost of living is going up, and they see a Labor Party who are not focused on the issues that they care about. Every day here in the Senate, we have a question time where Labor ministers thumb their noses not only at the accountability that is required of this institution but also at how Australians are doing it tough.

I say to the Labor Party: call an election. Bring it on now. Please bring on an election now, and you will see how angry those Australians are. There is going to be an election in Queensland in 44 days time. My party, at a state level in Queensland, does not have a great record at winning state elections, but I will bet London to a brick that Steven Miles is not going to be the Premier after the coming election. Labor are going to get smashed, particularly in regional Queensland. We saw that on Tuesday of this week when not one Labor member went out and spoke to those farmers and other people from regional Queensland. The mob are cranky, and they're going to come after the Labor Party.

Question agreed to.