Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the rise in inflation and interest rates, the Labor government has again delivered Australians more poverty and more pain. There was no turning the corner, as they promised—another failure in a long list of many broken promises fuelled by policies that just don't work. Labor's focus is not on dealing with their broken economic strategy but on deflection and denial. Right now they are searching for new ways to get their hands on more of your money. There's no reward for hard work in that. In their face right now are big challenges—more people on JobSeeker and more on youth allowance, and increasing numbers relying on income support. On inflation and interest rates, Australia has higher rates than every comparable country, the UK, the USA and Canada. We differ in that Australia is the only one of those going backwards too.

As Liberals, we know energy is the economy and energy impacts everything. Our plan is leveraging from our assets—reducing emissions in a way that protects jobs and keeps the lights on, not the reckless race to net zero. After a record-breaking heatwave, the energy bill shock is coming, Australia. Brace yourself, especially those on fixed incomes and for my fellow South Aussies, who already pay the highest electricity prices in the country. The job of government is to keep Australians safe. Labor has tragically failed at that, and we all saw them dragged, kicking and screaming, to a royal commission to find out why. Small businesses are going out of business in record numbers. The usual signals of real trouble are being ignored by Labor because the reality is that they have no answers to a problem that is absolutely of their making.