Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is about a competition between two different policies. If you look at the scoreboard today, on one side you have the Labor Party—six years, and the price of electricity doubled. Speaking as somebody from South-East Queensland, electricity prices went up every single year under Labor. If you look at the other side of the scoreboard, you have the Turnbull government. We have seen in South-East Queensland, from 1 July this year, reductions in prices of up to five per cent for residences and eight per cent for businesses.

The Labor Party has not only been a disgrace at the federal level. At the state level, we still have a Labor Party in Queensland. This is a Labor Party that has been more than happy to see poles and wires on charge to consumers at ridiculous, inflated prices. We have ownership from the Queensland government. They've been more than happy to see the values of those assets maintained at a high level. The answer is to actually write down those assets. If the Labor Party in Queensland cared about the pensioner at home and if the Labor Party in Queensland cared about the small business owner, they would write down those assets. It would not cost them a cent. And, if the Labor Party in Queensland were to say,' We will not privatise,' then they have no reason not to write down the assets. There is a reason they won't write down those assets. Do you know what that is? They love the money. They love the dividends. They know the higher their assets are valued in Queensland the more they can charge those pensioners, the more they can charge those small business owners and the more they can charge those hard-working Australians struggling to put food on the table. They are more than happy to apply what is effectively a secret tax to price gouge every Queenslander, and do you know what they'll do? They'll put it in the coffers of an incompetent state government.

This is also a state government that has been more than happy to ensure, on ministerial instruction, no less, that the government owned entities take out debt. They take out debt and then they pay it back to the state government in special dividends. This is a racket; this is a scam. They're more than happy to have government enterprises taking out debt, and I'm talking about nearly a billion dollars of debt.

What have we done on the other side of the equation? What has the coalition government already done?

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