James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) | Hansard source

I'll just remind everybody who is in the blessed state of listening to this debate of what we are currently arguing about in the Senate. It is:

Australia is in an entrenched home grown cost of living crisis, and the Albanese Labor Government has no economic plan to lower inflation, grow the economy, or restore Australia's standard of living.

I question what planet the Labor senators are on sometimes. It's clearly not planet Earth. Clearly there's something in the water supply in the Labor Party offices, because, for the last year, 18 months—funnily enough, ever since the Labor Party came to power—Australians have been suffering a cost-of-living crisis. It's only now that the Labor Party have woken up from whatever dreamlike state they exist in and worked out, 'Oh, hang on, Australians are doing it tough.' This is the Labor Party who wasted $450 million last year on a referendum that divided Australians. This is the Labor Party who failed to mention cost of living at all in the calendar year 2023.

It is only in this year, in the run-up to an early election—and for those who are listening, this building is full of rumours concerning Prime Minister Albanese not just doing a reshuffle but also heading off to see the new Governor-General for an early election—that, because the Labor Party are looking towards the electoral mathematics of winning the election, they are talking about the cost of living. This is the Labor Party who made all sorts of wild and wonderful promises before the last election about how they were going to help Australians. Then, the Labor Party got into power and promptly forgot about all those promises and instead focused on trying to divide Australians and wasting $450 million. The secretary of the Labor Party has clearly briefed the Prime Minister and the cabinet and said: 'Look, there's a cost-of-living crisis. You've got to do something about it.' Of course, we don't have a plan from the Labor Party; we have TikTok videos, memes, bumper stickers and emojis. We have a plethora of things that go ping, but we certainly don't have anything that will help Australians dealing with a cost-of-living crisis.

The inflation figures came out last week, and this is the type of stuff that should be keeping the policymakers and the decision-makers of Australia awake at night. Food has gone up 11.4 per cent, housing has gone up 14 per cent, rents have gone up 14.2 per cent, electricity is up 21.5 per cent, gas is up 22.2 per cent, health has gone up 11.1 per cent and education has gone up 10.9 per cent. This is what is happening to Australians. This is what is happening to everybody in Australia because of the decisions of the Labor Party.

This is where it comes into its own: the Labor Party aren't very good at running anything. They're pretty good at winning elections. They are the masters of the running the scare campaign. The Labor Party are the masters of spin, lies and deceit. They are good at that; they've written the book on that, and you can find it in your local library. What they're not good at, because they don't come from the business world, is understanding what drives inflation. The No. 1 thing that's driving inflation at the moment in Australia is government spending. This Labor Party is spending billions upon billions of dollars on really nothing at the moment, because they're not dealing with the underlying reasons around why everything costs so much. It is because of the decisions made by the Labor Party in their two years in office.

I hope that, in my home state of Queensland and across the country, if the Prime Minister does call an early election in August or September—or 7 December, which is what some cabinet ministers have been telling other people in this building—the Australian people can deliver their verdict on this poorly run government. They are a government led by a weak Prime Minister and a government who are not addressing the underlying issues impacting the Australian economy, but also, more worryingly, they have forgotten people. They've forgotten how tough it is—how tough Queenslanders are doing it at the moment. In Queensland we've got the double whammy of a state Labor government and a federal Labor government. On 26 October we're definitely going to get rid of Steven Miles and his mob.