David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This Easter will be the hardest Easter for Australians in living memory not only because they're paying $27,000 more for their mortgage. Their electricity bills have gone up by 40 per cent and their insurance by 30 per cent. Now we've got a government that said there was no crisis on fuel, but, now they've found one, they're going to make sure that Australians are going to do it even harder over this Easter.

Let me make it a little bit more local and give you a human toll. What will happen, not just for those that can't afford to pay their mortgage but for those that were going to go out and visit western Queensland? You see, this is the start of western Queensland's tourist season, because it starts to cool down. We get over 60,000 visitors out to the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame, the Qantas Founders Museum, the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton and right back in to the Charleville Cosmos Centre and the Big Rig in Roma. We are already seeing cancellations because they don't have confidence that this government has handled this crisis of fuel properly. They don't believe that they can go out there and get from town to town and be able to spend money in these economies.

If we don't have that money, we start to go broke. Then we rely on the weather, and we hope the rain comes and we can continue to produce your food and fibre. This is a stark reality. This is the human toll that we are seeing, from caravan parks in Stanthorpe all the way through to Longreach, which is the trail that many people will start on these Easter holidays. This is the human toll of an Albanese government that has mismanaged its economy and mismanaged our nation.