Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The first 100 days, and the key word I'm getting from my electorate is 'disappointment'—100 days of disappointment. In the first two weeks we sat in parliament, all we heard about was climate change and the voice to parliament. The people in my electorate said, 'Are these really the priority of this new government? Here we are struggling to make ends meet, and they're talking about those issues.' All these issues have to be dealt with, of course, but it's about prioritising what is right. The people of Longman don't believe that climate change and the voice to parliament are the major issues that are facing our country at the moment. The fact is that the cost-of-living pressures and the homelessness issue in my electorate far outweigh those other issues that the government has been prioritising. The middle-class people in the suburbs of Australia feel abandoned by the Labor Party. It's as simple as that. Interest rates are killing people. The interest rates are going up and, therefore, the mortgages are going up. So the investors who have to pay these mortgages have to raise the rents of the people who are renting. So their cost of living is going up.

Let's have a look at what Labor's solutions are: 'Let's abolish the fuel excise and stick another 22 cents a litre on their fuel bill.' That's probably going to work out to be an extra $50 a week for the average Aussie. That's a great move; they can really afford that! Labor put up wages. But, unfortunately, the Labor Party are full of people who have never been in business, who have no concept of what that decision means. I was talking to a local baker, and I said, 'How did you go with the pay rise?' He said, 'It was easy; I just cut 40 hours a week out of my wages bill. I laid a couple of casuals off, and the full-timers are going to pick it up.' Every employer wants to work or earn as much as they can. But, at the end of the day, they have a budget and, if their budget is $200,000 for wages, when you put up wages, all of a sudden, they don't have a bigger budget. In 35 years of small business, 22 years in ownership, I've never had someone walk in the next day and say, 'Hey, there was a pay rise yesterday; can I pay you a few more dollars?'

The money is not endless. But, unfortunately, this is a concept that Labor never understands. The money just comes off a tree at the back of Parliament House, apparently, and you just keep pulling it off the tree. I always laugh about the 'trillion dollars of debt' comment. It is a joke, because we know that Labor were responsible for over half of that. Every person I talk to in my electorate are completely behind the fact that the government had to go to extraordinary measures during extraordinary times and were admired around the world for the way that they handled the pandemic and, in fact, were asked for advice by many countries around the world.

Then I look at the electricity promise. We have a promise from the Prime Minister, saying, 'We're going to cut electricity prices to households by $275.' He's not going to come forward on this. There's a difference between a leader and a manager. We don't have a leader in this country; we have a manager who runs around putting out fires. He doesn't build firebreaks to prevent fires; he just runs around trying to put out fires. He's either misled or he is incompetent if he hasn't done due diligence. If he has made promises without knowing all the facts, as I say, he is either misled or he is incompetent. It's one of the two. Only a fool would come out and make promises without knowing all the facts. That again shows that this is not about delivering for the people; this is about winning votes at whatever cost—and it sounded good and, because it sounded good, 'I'm going say it.' Who isn't going to be happy about $275? But, when you don't deliver on it, that's not on; you've treated the Australian people like fools—and they will respond.

The Australian economy is a big business. That's all it is—a big business with big numbers. It concerns many people out there that we have running this country a party that is full of political career people who are from unions. I say, 'God help us all,' because the future will not be good under this government.

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