Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to this motion to take note of answers from government ministers in question time. It's fascinating that the government want to talk about anything but the cost of living and the impact that it's having on the Australian people. Their talking points roll out all the excuses, all the tricky language, all the distractions from the reality of what Australians are feeling.

As my colleagues have said, Australians are hurting. But the focus should be on the fact that the Australian government, this government, made a number of promises to the Australian people, before the last election, in relation to the economic circumstances that they would see under a Labor government. Quite clearly, those promises have been broken and continue to be broken by Labor—of course, the most famous being the $275 reduction in power prices that Mr Albanese and Labor promised 97 times before the election, which will never be seen. The Australian people are now supposed to be grateful that, because Labor broke its promise to them to reduce power prices, they're receiving back some of their own money to mitigate the cost of higher power prices, which is exactly the opposite of what was promised to them before the election.

They were promised cheaper housing costs, and the average Australian is paying over $30,000 a year more on their mortgage than they were when this government came into power. That's clearly a broken promise. They were promised cheaper housing, but housing has only become more expensive. They were promised cheaper food, and that's up by over 11 per cent. The number of things that have gone up by more than 10 per cent since this government came to power is a long list. Health is up by 10.4 per cent. They talk about cheaper health, but health costs have gone up by 10.4 per cent. Education is by 11.5 per cent. Food, as I said, is up by 11.7 per cent. Housing is up by 12.9 per cent. Rents are up 16.4 per cent, and gas is up 33.9 per cent.

This government of broken promises continues to distract, to talk about other people, to do anything but acknowledge that it made these promises to the Australian people before the last election and has no intention, no desire, no will to keep the promises that it made.

Question agreed to.