Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Senator Hume, I think the difficulty with you putting a proposition to us and to the Australian people that somehow you would have a different outcome on cost of living is that you really ask people to ignore the fact that you have voted against all of the government's cost-of-living measures. I know you want to try and shift the conversation, because you now want another committee—you want to have a discussion about what we do. But when you were tested, Senator, you and your colleagues made very clear that, actually, the cost of living was not your priority. There is no other way to explain the way in which you voted in this chamber.

Now, you might be desperate to come up with an agenda where you can say to Australians: 'Look, we're going to have this committee and it's going to talk about this, and we're going to do all of these things, but please forget about the fact we voted against energy price relief, please forget about the fact that we voted against cheaper medicines and please forget about the fact that we don't actually think your wages should—