Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Just a very friendly warning to the member for Adelaide: I'd be very careful having the member for McMahon in my electorate. Your high vote will go down, in fact, if you have him visit too many times. He has wrought destruction on regional Australia. Whilst the Minister for Climate Change and Energy may well have a mandate to lower emissions, he does not have a mandate to destroy regional Australia, and I will stick up for regional Australia every day of the week. I heard the member for Adelaide talking about the importance of renewables and the fact that Labor is bringing down power prices. No, no, no, Labor is not bringing down energy prices. In fact, the opposite is the case. When you have a town in your electorate, as I do—Crookwell—which is surrounded by wind towers and provides somewhere in the order of 50 to 60 per cent of New South Wales's renewable energy projects but which has to have diesel generated backups for its power supply because of the number of times that it just goes off the grid and has blackouts for up to six or more hours, you know something is palpably wrong.

Labor can come in and talk it up all they like, but the fact is that Labor is not reducing the cost of living, and that's what this motion talks to. It also talks to the fact that this is their No.1 priority, the cost of living. Well, I call bunk. Labor's first priority was the Voice. How well did that go? Kowtowing the unions was high on the list, and that continues unabated. The implementation of an unrealised capital gains tax is something they never spoke about before the election but is something that is going to cruel our farmers, my farmers, who have their land connected to their superannuation. It doesn't take too much to have $3 million in your superannuation account when your land is connected to it. They are going to get a tax bill on farm land that they haven't even sold—call that fair? How is that going to reduce their cost of living?

Then we go to all the other things that Labor is obsessed about at the moment, like Palestinian statehood. How about Labor actually concentrates on real and meaningful cost-of-living policies? It won't, because Labor's always about the politics. It's never about the policies. Labor does the politics very well—I must admit that—but there are people out there who are hurting. There are people out there who are doing it really, really tough. Labor promised cheaper power. It hasn't happened. Labor promised 1.2 million more homes, but the only policy they've brought in that may well help is a pause on the construction code, which is something that we fought for prior to the election. It's a coalition policy.

Did you hear that coming out of the Labor ministers' mouths this week when they announced it? They had it as part of their productivity roundtable, a talkfest that did nothing for productivity—go figure! All it was was a talkfest for the unions. Housing targets are being missed. Our out-of-pocket costs are skyrocketing, and there are people living in their cars. There are older Australians who have worked so hard to build this nation to what it is today that cannot afford to turn the heater on in winter or the air conditioner on in summer because of the energy costs and the bills they are being forced to pay. That's on Labor's watch.

I heard the member for Adelaide talk about the interest rates. 'They're coming down,' he says. Yes, they're coming down off 12 increases. The great Australian dream of owning their own home is a pipedream for young Australians. Some of them will never own their own home because of Labor's policies. This is so cruel; it is so unfair. You've got parents out there working two and three jobs. You've got kids being looked after in childcare centres, and anybody who watched the 60 Minutes episode last night knows what a crock that system is at the moment. There should be a royal commission into child care, and I'll say that right here and right now. There should be, and that's not just on the back of that episode but on the back of what's happening in the childcare system. It is a system which is broken.

Free visits to the doctor and lower taxes, the Prime Minister going out there with his green Medicare card—again, it's a crock. It's not right; it's not true. Labor might say it is—and they can say it all they like—but they know deep down in their own hearts that the cost-of-living crisis is the result of their policies.

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