Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

with absolutely no basis to the claim. Then, to cover up their embarrassment, they put some spin on it.

Government senators interjecting—

I've hit a nerve. I'll take those interjections, because I've hit a nerve because they're embarrassed at the fact they made that claim, and then they put a spin on it to try and say, 'Oh no, it was actually about the Morrison government.' Righto! You can convince yourselves as much as you want.

The government's contempt for the intelligence of Australians could not be any clearer. Instead of being honest about how its reckless spending has driven up interest rates and inflation, all we hear from the Albanese government is that inflation was at six per cent when it came to office. How convenient that Labor omits the context behind this figure! How convenient that Labor refuses to mention the pandemic! Heaven forbid they had been in government when the pandemic hit, we would be in a worse situation than we are currently in—and you thought it couldn't get any worse than what we're currently have. How convenient that Labor overlooks the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression and a crisis that sent inflation soaring around the globe! How convenient that Labor disregards the reality that Australia emerged from the pandemic stronger than most other developed nations, thanks to the coalition government's economic management! How convenient that Labor tries to erase the fact that its own pandemic measures would have cost taxpayers an additional $81 billion! But we know they love to spend like this.

Labor's year zero mentality has come as no surprise. This government discard inconvenient truths and rewrite history because they're manufacturing the facts to suit their political agenda. For almost four years the Albanese ministry of truth has been beavering away. There was the Prime Minister's historical distortion of Gough Whitlam's dismissal. There was the Prime Minister's historical revisionism of John Curtin's decision to look to America—an interpretation which Peter Jennings said 'would fail as an undergraduate essay'. And there are a litany of Labor promises that the government conveniently no longer mentions. Will I get some interjections? No doubt I will. I'm waiting for them.

There is a clear pattern here: the promise of a $275 cut to power bills; every year, the promise that people are better off under the Labor government; the promise of cheaper mortgages; the promise to build 1.2 million new homes; and the promise that, when you visit the GP, all you need is a Medicare card. Where have the promises gone? Down the Orwellian memory hole.

Government senators interjecting—

There are those interjections again. And there is the big lie churned out by the Albanese ministry of truth that it inherited a trillion dollars of debt. It's a lie that they repeat ad nauseam.

I'm hitting another nerve there. It's a lie so egregious it was even exposed by their friends at the ABC. When the coalition left government, net debt was $516 billion—almost half of what Labor claimed. Keep in mind that $343 billion was for pandemic measures which saved one million businesses and kept four million Australians in jobs. And yet isn't it ironic that Labor's trillion dollar debt lie has come back to bite them? The fiction they fabricated to smear the coalition is now an emerging problem of their own making. Fancy that!

Thanks to the Albanese government's reckless spending, Australia is hurtling towards $1.2 trillion in debt by the next election. This debt bomb—not a bunker buster but an opportunity obliterator—will land on generations of Australians to come. When future generations ask, 'How did we get here?' not even the Albanese ministry of truth will be able to erase its record of its reckless spending. The millions squandered on a divisive referendum, the billions taken from Australian taxpayers to subsidise a handful of university students, the Labor policy that failed the fairness test, and, of course, billions in handouts to green energy groups to roll out— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.