Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member over there may wish to acquire this knowledge as well. He may wish to look at the statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. When I looked at them, I looked at the timing. Do you remember when Labor and Kevin Rudd came to power? I looked at that date, and I looked at when Kevin Rudd lost the office and it was Julia Gillard in between there—I think they call them the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd glory years. So what actually happened to electricity prices in this nation during those glory years? I looked at it, and when I did the sums on the ABS numbers I saw an increase of 118 per cent. So I ask you, Minister: is that correct? Did we see an increase of 118 per cent under the glory years? The member over there—I think the member for Moreton—was a member of a government whose policies saw a 118 per cent increase in retail electricity prices. To me, Minister, that takes a special type of gross incompetence to get a 118 per cent increase.

You might also wish to inform us of what has happened, according to the ABS statistics, to electricity prices under the coalition government. I have also had a look at when the coalition came to government, when the last Labor people were chased out of town, destroyed in a landslide election, and the coalition government was elected. I saw in that period of time a three per cent increase. So I saw a 118 per cent increase under the glory years of the Rudd Labor government, against, I think, three—not 30 but three per cent. What type of incompetence does that take? I ask the minister.

I would also like to ask the minister: are there any lessons to learn from the golden state of South Australia? What can we learn from there, Minister, about the brilliant policies of the South Australian Labor government? Surely there are some lessons that we could learn there. I would also like to ask you about the glorious Victorian government. Did they actually increase the coal royalties, and what effect did increasing the coal royalties have?

See this speech in context