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

I want to speak about the cost-of-living crisis that all Australians are enduring under this Labor government. Yesterday, as the Reserve Bank raised interest rates for the 10th consecutive time, Labor was busy breaking promises and announcing new taxes. Instead of working with the Reserve Bank to bring down inflation, the government is putting all its energy into breaking election promises and taxing Australians more.

In my travels up and down the coast of Queensland over the last week, people wanted to know: what is Labor doing about the cost of living?

Honourable Senator:

An honourable senator interjecting—

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

Well, nothing. I'll take the comment from my good friend from Victoria. A nice lady in Tully said to me, 'Sweet foxtrot alpha.' I would tend to agree with my good friend from Tully, as much as I agree with my good friend from the great state of Victoria, that Labor are doing nothing about addressing the cost of living. Energy bills are soaring. Mortgage payments are rising every month. Rents are increasing. Grocery costs are rising by the day. And Labor's promised real wage increase has not eventuated. Fuelled by Labor's reckless budget, inflation is running out of control in Australia. Power bills are skyrocketing, despite Prime Minister Albanese's promise to cut electricity bills by $275 each year, and this is happening as inflation has begun to decline in similar economies.

On the $275, Labor promised not once, not twice but 97 times before the last election that they would cut your power bills by $275. But, since the election, you cannot get a Labor minister, a Labor backbencher or even an unnamed Labor source to mention the figure 275. They won't even say 'two', 'seven' or 'five', because they know they have broken another election promise. This is the reality that Australians have to deal with. We're right to wonder what Labor is going to slug us with next, because Labor are making it up as they go along.

Inside the past three weeks we've had: a Prime Minister who's refused to rule out further changes to your super; a Treasurer who's refused to rule out changes to negative gearing; a Treasurer also refusing to rule out changes to capital gains tax, including on the family home; a Prime Minister who's then rushed out and said, 'No, we won't touch your house'; and a Treasurer who's then come out and stumbled over a few words and then run back into his office. This is a Treasurer of Australia who is the political love child of Paul Keating and Wayne Swan and who is going to give his heroes, his mentors, a run for their money for the title of Australia's worst Treasurer. At the moment it is a close 1 and 2 between Paul Keating and Wayne Swan. But I can tell you, Treasurer Jim Chalmers is coming up the inside straight at a rapid rate of knots at the moment. He's going to overtake them and he's going to get the gold medal for Australia's worst Treasurer in his first term as Treasurer.

It is clear that whatever the Prime Minister and Labor say cannot be trusted, whatever time of the day they make their comments. Just think, since Labor came into power, the average Australian family are paying more than $20,000 extra each year on their mortgage. The Prime Minister has no plan to help struggling families. Labor's left-wing policies only continue to worsen the pressure on inflation. Interest rates are now at a level that has not been seen since the nightmare Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. Sadly, it is clear that Labor would prefer to play politics than to have the backs of Australians during these tough economic times.

The latest national accounts show that households are saving just 4.5 per cent of their incomes, down from 7.1 per cent in the September quarter. But instead of acting to ease pressure on inflation, Labor want to raise taxes. During the election campaign Anthony Albanese promised cost-of-living relief. Remember the figure $275 that he said 97 times? But the reality is that life is only getting harder for families under Labor.

And Queenslanders I speak and listen to our struggling. They know that this federal government doesn't have their back. Two weeks ago I did Politics in the Pub in a small community called Glass House on the Sunshine Coast. I was there with a member for Glass House, Andrew Powell, the member for Longman, Terry Young, and the member for Fisher, Andrew Wallace. One of the stories I always want to tell everybody is that families are pulling their children out of sport—in this particular instance it was out of soccer—because they can't afford the registration fees for their kids to play soccer on the Sunshine Coast. This is no attack on the good people who run soccer in Queensland. This is the realisation that mums and dads across this country, across Queensland, are doing it tough and are cutting back on their children's sports because they've got to make a choice between their children's sport and putting food on the table. I say to the Labor government: shame on you. Shame on you.

But what do we also see in my home state of Queensland? Reckless spending on Christmas parties that cost taxpayers $64,000. That's $700 a minute. I'll repeat that for you: $64,000 on a Christmas party; $700 a minute. Who do we see? The Labor Premier of Queensland, who would spend $64,000 on a Christmas party. A Premier who enjoys the red carpet as much as she enjoys strangling business with red tape. A Premier who spends—I cannot fathom that you could actually spend $64,000 on a Christmas party. Maybe I come from the wrong side of the tracks. I was raised in a family of cheerios—that's frankfurters for you southerners. Christmas parties were maybe some prawns, some cheerios, a bit of rum and Coke, some warm white wine and things like that. I just don't understand. Was it caviar? Did they get sausages and put caviar on them at this Christmas party? This is something an Arabian prince would spend on a Christmas party. This is something that a billionaire from India would spend on a party, not the Premier of Queensland. The Premier of Queensland has her snout in the trough and is enjoying the good life while Queenslanders are suffering because of the cost of living and because of crime.

I want to talk about crime here in Queensland. In particular, I want to talk about the introduction of the breach of bail amendment, which is long overdue. There is more work to do there. The Palaszczuk government is lucky that, when it comes to certain levels of accountability, they're around there with a university assignment. If they submitted their breach of bail amendment to Turnitin—for you boomers out there, that's a plagiarism checking app, says the boomer here—it would have returned a 110 per cent plagiarism report. One hundred per cent would be because it was copied word for word from the amendment tabled by David Crisafulli, the next Premier of Queensland, in 2021; and 10 per cent more because of their negligence in not providing a bibliography with the LNP's leader in it.

But the issue of crime is not going to go away. A good friend of mine, at the end of last year, was woken up in his home in Ingham by torchlight from people in his house robbing him. They took his phone, took his wallet and then took his car and tried to run him over. Then his car was found torched a week later in Townsville. This is the reality of Queensland, where people are being robbed in their own homes as they sleep, and yet we have a Premier who spends $64,000 on a Christmas party. Marie Antoinette, if she had her head, would be blushing at the chutzpah of Labor's Premier in Queensland.